Curious as a Cat – Bringing WONDER Alive in your Classroom!

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Do you have a curious class? Upper elementary students (or the ones I was teaching!) were always so curious. That left me wondering how do I help these students guide and learn as well.

Remembering back to my own 5th grade class – my teacher had a book titled Ever Wonder Why. She posed a question each Monday and had a basket of guesses on Fridays. She would read through the answer and I would just revel over the new information.

It was something that stuck with me! (*update* I actually ran into this teacher recently, and told her just how much I loved that!) It’s like learning within learning.

This book gave an outlet and the website I’m sharing give students an outlet for their own curiosity. This sparked a Wonder Wall that I used in my classroom to help students ask and find answers to the world around them!

Wonderopolis is a wonder-fueled perfect nonfiction addition’

Wonderopolis is such a perfect site for your most curious students! It is literally a VAULT of kid friendly questions and answers perfect to explore.

I love Wonderopolis for so many reasons!

The guided questions at the top!
The article with vocabulary words highlighted (clicking on them for help)
Comprehension check after each article
Videos with each article as well

Here is a great FREE recording sheet ( or any nonfiction recording sheet is great to use!)

We used Wonderopolis in a variety of ways in my classroom:

Wonder Leader: One student would choose a question of the week and they would research to help us learn. Students would guess the answers and the end of the week the student would walk us through the solution.

Lead In: If there was a Wonder related to a topic we were studying. – this was a great way to start off the class by introducing a possible misconception.

Class Wonder: Sometimes we’d take the 5 minute extra time or in between times that we had and do a Wonder together.

My FAVORITE way to use Wonderopolis was as a Nonfiction Center!

It is SO HARD to find quality nonfiction that interests all students! Books are a great start but Wonderopolis was an alternative for our nonfiction center as part of Daily 5.