Wonderopolis Week 8

                 This week I checked out Wonderopolis.  Previous to this, I thought Wonderopolis was a site where students can just read kid-friendly articles about current topics.  However, I now see it is so much more.  The focus of this site is the ‘wonder of the day’, where they feature a thought-provoking question along with an article and images to complement the text.   Students can also search by topic, or they can type in a topic or question in the search bar.   This feature is great to teach kids about keyword searches and how you phrase a question can result in different results.  By teaching students about keyword searches on this site, compared to Google, teachers can ensure that students will find safe, age-appropriate results on Wonderopolis.                  Some other great features of Wonderopolis are that each article is accompanied by a word wall with challenging words, a quiz to test students’ knowledge and follow up activities.  There are many ways students can interact with the text and deepen their understanding of various topics.  I particularly liked the discussion board.  This made me think of how University of Buffalo students use UB Learns, and we post questions and comments in the discussion board to have virtual discussions.  However, parents and teachers need to be mindful and teach students the proper and safe way to share information online.  Another thing I appreciate is that Wonderopolis always cites their sources for each article.  It is important for students to see that we all need to cite our sources and show where we get our information from.

                This site is completely free which makes it accessible for any educator to use it.    Some downsides to the site are that teachers cannot search articles by reading level and some articles may be too advanced for younger readers or readers reading below grade level.  In addition, I could not find anything that supports ELL students on the site.     

                   Overall, I recommend Wonderopolis. It is great to use for project-based learning and supports inquiry-based learning.  Wonderopolis focuses on asking questions and finding out answers to those questions.  This site is also a great place to start teaching some valuable digital citizenship skills such as posting information online in a discussion board, citing your sources and the importance of a good keyword search.