During the Wonder discussion at our Modeling the Molecular World course in Milwaukee this summer, Leah Innman, a high school biology teacher in Medford, Minnesota, described how she used to teach the cell membrane with small foam phospholipid models. First came a lecture. Then she handed out the models and asked, "OK, can you build it?" Her students built the lipid bilayer, she said, "and they weren't creating that understanding." The lecture answered every question before students had a chance to ask one. Now she plans to "flip around" the lesson. In the Wonder phase, the question matters more than the answer.
How do you get students to ask their own questions about a model, and care enough to find the answers? Brianna Caljean, a teacher in the Phoenix Union High School District in Arizona, named the most common way we stop them: "If you give students too many instructions, they will do exactly what you tell them to do and then stop." Wonder is the first phase of WE² Model, and it is the easiest phase to shut down. The pedagogies that protect it are small ones, and teachers in two of our summer courses named the ones that work for them.
On day 2 of our Modeling Infection & Immunity course, the Wonder session began with bacterial cell models already on the tables. Teachers started with a quiet notice and wonder, writing in their notebooks first, and only then started "quietly talking" at their
One teacher has students write observations on small whiteboards, "because then as you're coming around, you can see where they're thinking." When a board has only two things on it, the teacher's prompt is simple: "Keep going."
Christina Bowers, PhD, a microbiologist and course instructor, has built her career exploring curiosities in the microbial world. For anyone who already knows the bacterial cell envelope, she says, it can be tempting to label the parts for colleagues seeing the structure for the first time. She asks them to give everyone the chance to observe first, without being guided. Even in topics she has taught for years, she keeps finding new questions, and she counts that among the joys of teaching biology.
When the instructors asked what shuts down wonder, teachers named giving the answer, telling, and "somebody else saying it, either you or another student." Another table added correcting vocabulary "right off the bat." The group's conclusion was to withhold vocabulary during this phase.
Every class also has a student who arrives already knowing the terms and wants everyone to know it. When I meet one, I give them a harder job: "You already know what it's called. Now show me something on the model the name doesn't explain." The word stays out of the conversation, and the student goes back to looking. As one instructor explained, starting with a shared model "helps all the students be able to engage at the same level," because wonder isn't graded.
Wonder produces questions, and those questions need somewhere to go. Chris Chou, a biology educator at Longmont High School, suggested capturing them in "a big long list"
That list is also a record of what your students are thinking. Asli Sezen-Barrie, Anica Miller-Rushing, and Elizabeth Hufnagel (2020) collected 165 wondering questions from middle school students after a climate change activity called "It's a Gassy World." The questions fell into three kinds: what students directly observed, connections to other subjects, and predictions about the future. When five teachers reflected on those questions, they noticed what their students needed next, including help thinking across space and time.
The study was qualitative and focused on one activity, so it doesn't show that wondering raises test scores. It does show what a list of student questions can tell a teacher. Sort your class list once, and you can see which questions stay close to what students observed and which ones reach further. Students' questions are data about what to teach next.
Teachers in both courses came back to the same idea: How often do our high school students and college students get to play? Where is that joy?
This week, try one Wonder pedagogy from this post with a model you already use, and adjust it for your students. What shuts down wonder in your classroom, and what has worked to protect it? Reply and tell us.
→Next in the series: Explore, when the vocabulary finally arrives.
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