A Sense of Wonder

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Wonder…It’s such a great way to promote questioning and curiosity in a classroom. Our school theme this year is Wonder. So, of course I am immersing my students into a year of wonder this year.

To begin I made a theme wall. This year, I chose to focus on some key words and used wonder as my base. This is what I came up with.

wonder theme wall

Wonder Activities

We have various wonder activities that we are using in our classroom this year to encourage wonder. A great resource I found was a book called A Place of Wonder. This books had so many great ideas that can be used in your classroom. Our wonder wall is where we place our wonders. My students brainstormed them at first and I wrote them down, but now they are beginning to write them down. Whenever they have a questions, I ask if they have put it on the wonder wall.

Our wonder wall is another big hit. Students come to this, look out the window and write what they observes. I have some young trees and flowers bushes outside my class, so there are often bees and butterflies to observe. I took an old wooden picture frame, added the letters wonder window and hung it up!

wonder window

One Small Square is another activity that forces students to focus on a small area and write or draw about what they see. There are many One Small Square books that are a great companion for this activity.

one small square

Interactive notebooks are an important part of my classroom. You can read more about them here. We use them to document our science and social studies learning throughout the year. My students made a wonder section in their notebooks so they could record their questions and discoveries.

And finally, I gathered some images to encourage discussion in my classroom. When I have a few minutes to spare, I put an interesting image onto our screen. We describe what we see and then share out our thinking and wondering. My students love this! After an image has been share on the screen, I place a printed version on our discovery table so they explore it more.

 

The curiosity in my classroom has never been so strong! My plan is to foster this and then later in the year, introduce Genius Hour. You can read more about my experience with Genius Hour in first grade here. To learn more about some of the activities I share about be sure to check out my Sense of Wonder pack.

A Sense of Wonder

A Sense of Wonder

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