Inquiry Learning through Wonder Day Project

Wonder Day Inquiry

Are you looking for some inquiry project examples? Do you sometimes feel that the curriculum is so crowded that students do not have time to conduct an inquiry project? Are you trying to allocate time to increase student autonomy and agency?

This upcoming Friday, March 15, there will be 11 teachers out for the IB MYP training. With these many teachers out, it is challenging to organize any sub. I always remind myself that any challenge is an opportunity. So here is an opportunity for students to explore an area of their interest and do some wondering. We call it KIS Wonder Day, as John Spencer’s Wonder Day project inspired this. 

In my current school, teachers have begun to explore ways to promote student agency, increase student choice, and integrate students’ voices. We have also discussed different ways that teachers could (and can) develop the KIS Quality Learning Behaviors (QLB) of our students:  

• striving for understanding;
• taking action ethically;
• nurturing passion in self and others.

Our next step is to engage students in thinking about these quality learning behaviors. It will be unnatural and contrived if we ask students to show us what they will do in responding to the quality learning behaviors mentioned above. Finally, we decided to involve students in conducting an inquiry project based on their personal interests. We intentionally do not want to call it a Passion Project. I think passion is a very heavy and strong word. The reality is that many students have not discovered their passion yet, and they need more time to explore their interests before finding their passion. Therefore, we follow John Spencer’s idea and call it Wonder Day. ​

Structure of the Wonder Day

By implementing Wonder Day, we also would like to remind teachers and students that inquiry can be fun and based on research. Since we only have one day, we set up some guidelines to support this process. Students are reminded that: 

• Their project could be an extension of their MYP subject study or a completely different area that they are interested in.
• They aim to complete the project within 4-5 hours.
• They follow the inquiry process: Wonder, Research, Create, Share, and Consolidate. (Consolidate is essential to reflect. We want to use a different word for reflection to avoid possible negative feelings toward reflection. We do not want students to think that they will have to write a long reflective essay at the end of their Wonder Day project.) 
• Their supervisor approves their project first to ensure the scope of the work is achievable within 4-5 hours.
• They can work individually or with a group of 2-3 people with defining roles and responsibilities.
• They record the inquiry process in their learning portfolio and share their learning with a broader community.

This is the first time KIS launched the Wonder Day project. I have put together a Wonder Day student workbook to facilitate this process. Most of the information is built upon John Spencer’s excellent work. You can subscribe to his blog to receive Wonder Day and Wonder Week classroom resources. This workbook aims to guide students through the inquiry process: Wonder, Research, Create, Share and Consolidate. 

Resources

• “Using a Wonder Week to Spark Student Inquiry.” www.spencerauthor.com/wonder-week/. John Spencer guided learners through clear steps to conduct an inquiry project in a fun and relaxing manner. You can subscribe to his blog to receive classroom resources for Wonder Day or Wonder Week.
• Steps to your inquiry research project This is a wonderful graphic organizer that guide students through the inquiry steps. It is suitable for MYP year 1 and 2 students.
• MISO research method developed by Cathryn Berger Kaye. This is easy for students to remember and easy to use. It also encourage students to consider both primary and secondary sources.

Student topics

We had received positive feedback from students and teachers about our first KIS wonder day. Students were excited to design their own learning and explored the topic that they were genuinely interested in. Lots of topics were generated by our students. Students asked can we do this again? Of course!