The Wonder Wall! - How to Document Student Questions at an Inquiry School

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 This year I feel like I've really been working on my Wonder Wall game. Why is the Wonder Wall so important? It's important as it is a place for students to express things that they are interested in, as relates to the current unit. 

Increasingly I try to find interesting photos or provocations or design activities that get students thinking, then provide students with cards containing question words (Who, What, Where, When, Why, How, How much, How many, etc) and let them write away. Students then undergo a process either facilitated by the teacher or in small groups, where they consider the questions that are meaningful, and the questions that require deeper thought to answer. By the end of the year my Year 3 students (Grade 2) were also using a modified version of "Question Formulation Technique" to think of which questions were open questions, and which were closed questions. 

With my units on Civilization and Earth's Changes this year, I found the use of pictures, to get the wheels of curiosity turning, in students' heads, to be especially useful for question generation in order to guide the inquiry. Here is one Wonder Wall display from this year.



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