What is Wonder Wednesday?

This week's teaching lab focused on inquiry-based learning. My inspiration for this lesson came from John Spencer's Wonder Week and Wonder Day resources. I also saw a fellow Ag Teacher on Instagram (@agteacherhowtos) try this activity in her classroom and decided to tweak it for an environmental science class. 

In my activity, I had each student choose a different bird of prey and come up with a research question, specific to that bird, that they wanted to know the answer to. We discussed the importance of formulating good questions, choosing reliable sources, and properly citing sources. Students researched the who, what, where, when, why, and how of their question and complied the information they found on a Google Slide. At the end of the class period, students had an opportunity to share what they had found. In many cases, the students' answers led them to ask even more questions!

Here is just one student example. We were pressed for time in lab, but if I were to replicate this activity in the classroom, I estimate that it would take one period for students to research their question and another period for students to present what they found.

As an instructor, I would give myself 4 out of 5 stars for this lesson. I think I did a good job of facilitating the inquiry process as well as connecting this lesson to academic standards in ELA like evaluating and citing sources properly. Also, as the teacher, I like how all the students were working in one shared Google Slides file. I noticed that my classmates had prepared a worksheet - which is a totally acceptable method - I just caught myself thinking about collecting back all those papers. Whereas, in this case, if I were to grade this activity, I can easily assign each student a grade and all I need is one file. 

This was also my first lesson where I utilized a student volunteer to write notes on the board. I was previously scared that this would just lead to chaos and confusion, but it actually worked really well and I think it also helped connect ideas that were coming up in the classroom to those coming from Zoom. Besides passing out materials, what are other ways to use student volunteers in the classroom?

I think I could have done a better job making this activity more exciting. If I were to redo any part of this lesson, I would choose to revise the interest approach. I wish I would have included a fun video about investigating questions and setting this activity up as if the students were solving a mystery to make it more engaging. 
 

My final comment about this lesson is that it can easily be done in person or remotely. While I do not know if I will be student teaching remotely, in-person, or a combination of both, I am glad that I got to try this activity with my classmates first because I think it could easily be a go-to for me in January. What other learning activities have you seen or used that create the same learning experience for in-person students and online students or at least allow for collaboration?