Wonder of the Week

Sometimes we practice inquiry skills by researching the Wonder of the Week, and do a mini-inquiry.  Our class goes through all the stages of inquiry in one afternoon:  We immerse ourselves in resources, investigate the answer to our big question, coalesce our learning and decide which observations answer our big wonder, and go public by sharing what we learned.

We took a wonder from our Wonder Window and made it into our Wonder of the Week.  Kierstyn's wonder from the Wonder Window got us all wondering about how money was made.  Throughout the week we wrote our predictions and thinking on our Wonder of the Week chart posted on our door.

At the end of the week we discussed "sources" and how we could use different sources to find information to answer our question.  We looked in books:

We looked online at research sites such as Pebblego and Brainpop, Jr:

We looked at the real thing, very closely:

And, of course, we wrote down our observations and new learning!

 After sharing what we learned, we went on a virtual field trip to factories and watched coins being minted and paper money being printed.



We did a lot of learning in one afternoon!