WONDERING what to do with those awkward minutes between busses?

Have you struggled with those minute between when the first and last buses are called? Some days it can stretch as long as twenty minutes. Those twenty minutes can be the longest of the day.

I saw one of the most amazing ideas yesterday while at Sappington. Jillian Skouby created a Wonder Wall where students used Post-It Notes to write down things they wondered about.

This is where the real power of the wall comes into play. The class picks one wonder every few days or weeks and uses those idle twenty minutes to research that topic. The note above asks why drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth tastes so bad. (Now all I can think about is how terrible that experience is!) Once they have exhausted this wonder a new one will be placed in the center indicating a new idea to research.

What else does this do?

• Helps teach the students what research could look like.
• It guides them to understand how to create a researchable question.
• Gets them interested in related ideas. The orange juice question lead the kids to start looking into chemical changes. 
• Helps the kids start to question the world around them and ask why.