Her focus on minilessons and explaining how she thinks through her different units is insightful. I sticky noted, highlighted and wrote all over my copy. I appreciate how hard she works on her thinking prior to instruction. She also lists a wide variety of resources for teachers to support lesson planning. I was extremely excited to read about how she uses Wonderopolis in her classroom.
A. Lesson: There are many ways to record thinking while you read.
Franki discusses the importance of modeling our thinking as she shares a wonder of the day on her interactive whiteboard. She circles key vocabulary, records her questions, and annotates where she is confused as a reader. Then she passes out another wonder and has her students record their own thinking. For follow up, together they create a class anchor chart about ways to record thinking.
B. Lesson: Identifying Unknown Vocabulary
Franki uses Wonderopolis in the follow up part of this mini lesson. "By discussing an online piece, students can see those strategies for identifying unknown words"
Wonderopolis has a tab for every wonder that lists the focus vocabulary in addition the students can find the words in the wonder and use different strategies including context clues.