Pushing Wonderopolis to the Next Level of Blooms

As I mentioned in earlier blogs, I have incorporated Wonderopolis into my reading plans, my goal for February will be to push my students to a higher level of thinking. The students have enjoyed reading the articles and their predictions and use of key vocabulary have increased. 

This month I am changing their end product. The students are still going to have to read the site, watch the videos and reflect on the vocabulary however, instead of recording 5 new facts each student is going to post a question on evernote from the article using their iPods. I am going to pass out a Bloom's Verb chart and assign different levels for the questions that they will be required to write.  The next day I will randomly choose a few student's evernote questions, and I will have the students answer the questions in their wonderopolis folder. I think this will be powerful for several reasons:

#1  All students will know there is a chance to have their question used so it will be important for each student to write a strong question.

#2 The students will have a different purpose for reading the article

#3 To answer the question, the students will use their iPods. Then I will randomly ask students to come up to the Smartboard and show in the article where they found the answer or what text they used for their inference.


As always I am pushing towards higher level thinking so my big goal will be by the end of the month that the students will be writing higher level questions, thinking and responding on a higher level and eventually all questions will be answered on evernote.  I am anxious to see how this process works this month.
Check back later in February to see how it is going.