What a "Wonder"ful World

This year has been by far one of the craziest years ever!  Yesterday my husband called and asked if I was going to ever be home again.  I of course responded with yes, but I just need to finish a couple more things... give me 30 minutes.  You know that 30 minutes turned into an hour and a half.  I did eventually make it home to enjoy an evening of football and food.








I digress... This year has been a year of changes.  A year of ups and downs.  A year of just needing one thing to get a hold of.   A year of doubting myself if I was differentiating enough to meet the needs of my 5 different grade levels in my classroom.  This weekend I finally found it! I am an AVID user of www.brainpopjr.com as my students love it and I can modify and adapt it to all of my different learners.  I had been using wonderopolis.org and had a small space for it on my calendar area.  This weekend I saw the tweet for Wonder #427 and it all clicked! I am always looking for different ways to introduce topics, make learning exciting and different, and of course differentiate!  Because of this one Wonder my calendar and teaching went from the same old calendar time I have had for the last 5 years to something more inviting, "wonder"ful and different.  Please remember that since I have students that are in 4th and 5th grade I am in charge of STAAR-alt assessment.  Wonder #427 is What is your Favorite Holiday Cookie.




Here is what I did:
-wrote out all of the wonder words
-put picture symbols with some of the more important/easy to remember ones
-My 4th and 5th grade students will have to alphabetize these
-my younger students will participate in reading them
- The picture symbols next to the words, those are also at the bottom in a matching game I create.  
-my non-verbal students will be able to interact with the wonder words by matching picture symbols
-This week we are going to have a cookie exchange and all of my students will get to vote and GRAPH their favorite cookie!


Wow!  That little wonder changed my whole outlook.  It was a reminder that I do know what I am doing.. I do know how to differentiate.. I do know how to meet the needs of all my students.


Today ROCKED!
We started off with the wonder.  Our wonders we use for the whole week.  Today our wonder was... I wonder where we bake cookies?  I was SO IMPRESSED when my students answered with oven, kitchen, stove!
Wow.. way to rock it guys! I love my BUSY BEES!

Some more of my classroom calendar area.


Have you ever just changed one little thing in your classroom... and received a whole different outlook?  Thanks wonderopolis.org