Have you Considered Wondering Homework?

My fifth graders love homework passes.  They are their "get out of jail" ticket.  If they forget their HW, they can use their HW pass and not get a "date." A date is when I write down their late HW and that is how I keep track of late assignments. The HW pass allows them an extra day to get their HW completed and not get a "date."   

Up until this year, I used to give HW passes for holiday (Halloween, Christmas, Valentines) but not this year.  I shifted my thinking and now my students earn their HW pass during the holidays.  I allow my students the opportunity to choose a wonder at Wonderopolis that must be connected to something that we are learning about in school.  They must leave a STRONG comment and on our first day back from a break or for example our 4 day weekend this week, we begin our day with students sharing their comment on the Smartboard. It is a great way to build community after a long break and most importantly students are learning over break and making connections with what we have been discussing in class. I am excited that they are learning to earn their HW pass and not just being given their HW pass.  I think that is another blog post in the future....

Celebrating Digital Literacy

 Today is Digital Learning Day and when I accessed the link to learn more about this celebration, I found this graphic. "Digital Learning Day is a national campaign that celebrates teachers and shines a spotlight on successful instructional practice and effective use of technology in classrooms across the country." As I looked at this graphic and read the words surrounding save the date, I knew that I wanted to post about how I use Wonderopolis in my writing workshop.


So often I ask myself a simple question when I am thinking about writing, "Is this authentic writing?" Occasionally the answer is no unfortunately because the lesson is designed to complete a writing indicator.  However, for the past two years, I have used authentic writing with my students by leaving comments on different wonders at Wonderopolis.  Because of a schedule change (Spanish 2nd trimester), I had to switch from Wonder Wednesday to Thinking Thursday which the students named for us.  I like that title because the students are thinking and extending their wondering at home while they write their wonder comment.  We completed our first round comments several weeks ago, and I was pleased with the specific criteria that the students chose for this year's comments.   

 The students created our class rubric this year with the following criteria:  connections, new vocabulary, new facts, asking questions to extend learning, new facts, predictions for tomorrow's wonder.  

 In addition, every comment that is left on Wonderopolis receives a reply that is authentic to their comment. The students beam when they find their comment and are able to share the respons with our class the following day after Thinking Thursday.

For enrichment, I encourage students to some additional research so that they can extend other comments.  I was so proud of S. as he researched Dan's comments!  Way to extend learning at home.  Have you tried having your students leave wonder comments? As you explore different digital sites today I would encourage to explore Wonderopolis. It is an amazing site that is being used K-12 focusing on non fiction reading along with integrating all reading/writing standards.  One shop stopping for literacy.

Wonder Comments Lift My Spirit

 After two weeks of a wonderful relaxing vacation, I started back to school today.  I was excited to see my students, but I wasn't thrilled with what I had to accomplish to get my students ready for their 2 1/2 hour reading diagnostic test this Thursday. Truth be known, I had only focused on the first diagnostic reading test for myself and guiding some specific mini lessons/whole group when needed. I had not passed back their September tests YET and gone over them with my students. Today was our first day back - crazy I know but I was out of time.  Our morning was spent going over the tests, over the tests, over the tests I guess you get the point.  At lunch I was sad and depressed.  To help myself over the slump, I pulled our class together, and I asked them to share if any of them had left a comment on Wonderopolis over the holiday break.  Five students replied yes, and we celebrated!  Here's why....

Perfect wonder made his Top Ten List- I will have ask him tomorrow for his list.

Maddy and her family actually visited the Tar Pits in CA over their vacation!! Wondering came to life!

Cade and his mom connected over penny candy sharing memories

Christine made a life connection about visiting Koala Bears at our zoo. She also made the correct predication for the next day's wonder!!

Finally, snowman left his very first comment.  He is learning English and I have been encouraging him since September. I was super proud of him, and the whole class clapped in celebration!!

As I wrote up their homework passes that I created to celebrate with them,  I was feeling much better. Have you had your students leave comments YET at Wonderopolis - I think you should!! 

PS:  As I sit here typing this post, I have decided that we will begin tomorrow morning with some eggnog in celebration of snowman's comment!  Perhaps some hot apple cider on Thursday after the reading diagnostic also.

Connecting Continents

Building wonder in my classroom has been a HUGE part the past two years.  Ever since I have been using Wonderopolis almost on a daily basis in my classroom.  I believe strongly that our students learn from our modeling, so I often use phrases like:  "I am curious..." 

"Did you ever wonder why?"  or this year I liked using the word ponder.  My students looked at me a little strangely at first, but quickly caught on after a few times.  

As I have posted many times on my blog, I truly believe the comment section is so important to extend the students learning globally and this summer wonder has spread across the continents.  Imagine my surprise when I got the email below.  

Harshitha is in India visiting her grandparents for the summer, I suggested that we could stay in contact through email and the comment section of Wonderopolis.  I was ecstatic when I got this email and then of course I found her comment on #619.  

 

I was so excited to see how she connected the wonder to our social studies unit on slavery and also made some personal connections.  Wondering across the continents is a first in my 23 years of teaching-thanks Harshitha!!

OLW: April Reflection

Most of the time I think about wondering through my students' eyes, but for the month of April I am going to reflect on how wondering has changed me as a teacher. 

#1  I have grown professionally outside of school because of my connections with NCFL. I have a larger audience because of my blog and my virtual twitter PD including virtual chats. Because of my extension beyond my school, I have widened my learning and my professional contacts.  I now "talk" frequently to Tracy and Tara about new ideas. Tracy left this in the comment section of a  blog post
Here is a tip...show the photo with no talking and write your wonders, give a fact and write more wonders...then share! Great lesson on how our own experiences draw different wonder and curiosity and how that changes the level of your wondering. Appreciate the "known to new" learning! Tara and I always seem to be on the same page although she is in New Jersey we posted about state testing on the same day, and she is handling it must better than I did. "I walked into our classroom today, and gazed upon those rows with loathing.  Gone were our friendly pods of five desks, spaced at odd angles so that everyone could move around the room easily.  Gone was that friendly feel of a room where people often work together to learn, where discussion and collaboration is encouraged.  Gone was that familiar, reassuring  feeling of being able to see each face as I stood in front of the room." These comments and many more have changed my lessons, my thinking and most of all encouraged me to reach out and extend my learning.  This summer I am excited to be planning some PD on my dock with many of my blogging and twitter friends.  


#2 Many of my blogs posts have been about the integration of Wonderopolis within my classroom almost everyday but especially on Wonder Wednesday. This was a huge shift for me because I now weave non fiction into all aspects everyday. NF is no longer just a unit in isolation. With the articles that I have been reading about Common Core I believe this is the shift towards more Non Fiction.  Finally the integration of technology through our iPods and iPad have been an integral part this year especially with this class.  As the years roll on as Bob Seger sings, I have noticed students need/want technology.  That could possibly be another blog post in the future (I am still wrapping my thinking around that idea)  When they use the iPad to read about the wonder or watch the video/links and then click to the word document to take their notes or answer the 3 questions they are actively engaged in their learning vs. one computer and a spiral notebook. This shift happened for me as well as the realization two years ago that we need need to prepare our students for the 21 Century especially in our classrooms.  Taking time to reflect has been a powerful tool for me in 2012. 

Here are some other OLW reflection posts for the month: 

Melissa @ Technology: figuring out how the pieces fit
   
Tracy @ Thinking Stems 

Tara @ A Teaching Life

Barbara @ One Little Word 

We Have to Teach Commenting

Most of my learning comes from extending my school day into conversations on twitter, and I enjoy when we just start tweeting a topic.  Last week, we were tweeting how to build stronger comments on a blog, and I tweeted about how I taught this skill in my class and a blog entry was born. Thanks Mary Lee, Karen, Franki and Gretchen for the conversations.


Having students leave comments on our class blog or on our favorite website Wonderopolis is a skill that I needed to teach my class.  I have to admit at the beginning I didn't even consider that I needed to teach this skill until I was reading their comments and honestly they were very weak. They were short and not reflective. I wasn't even sure if the students were reading their own comment let alone pulling new information from the WONDER article.


I have had the most success with using students' work as models, so we started looking at past comments on Wonderopolis and discussing which comments were strong and most important WHY?

From that point, we started a class chart about what makes a STRONG comment.  This chart really helped the students begin to focus their comments as well as evaluate their friend's comment. I was very excited to see that they are connecting the WONDER to our word study as well as our word wall.  Many students commented that the links from the WONDER created questions for them, so they thought they could post those questions back to the website. The student who suggested taking the new knowledge and transferring it to another area was very excited about learning about idioms and then using them in her writing.  How cool is that!!!  

Finally after creating our new chart this week, I typed it up and gave it to everyone to refer back to as their own personal anchor chart at home.  Tonight's HW was to go home, choose any WONDER and leave a thoughtful comment. I can't wait to read their comments and see how they applied the new anchor chart.