iWONDER from BBC is an exciting “question and answer” website librarians can use to promote inquiry-based learning.
The entry page of the BBC project shows questions like “What was the Earth’s first predator?” and “How does a breeze turn into a terrifying tornado?”. Each question links to an interesting article featuring text, images, and sometimes animation and video. The article concludes with links to related stories.
Although not designed specifically for students, these short, illustrated articles would be useful for informational text activities related to the Common Core Curriculum. Articles can be found across content areas including arts, food, science, consumer, earth, history, religion and ethics, and webwise. Readers can also link directly to the major BBC content sections.
Ask students to select a question from the main page and write about what they already know about the topic. Then, involve them in reading the article and discussing what what they learned. Finally, ask youth to develop new questions based on their reading. Use other Internet resources to address these new questions.
To explore the latest iWONDER topics, LIKE the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/bbciwonder.
To visit the website, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iwonder.