Wonderopolis is another fantastic website that lets students explore things they are interested in. In their research, students are always asking questions. With Wonderoplis, students can search a bank of over 130,000 questions in over 2,800 topics. This content is aligned to Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the STEM Educational Quality Framework, and Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. Students can also put in their own questions that will be added to the Wonderopolis wonder bank, which helps them learn how knowledge is built and accumulated.
Discovery Education is a K-12 multi-disciplinary platform containing over 200,000 digital assets including videos, podcasts, reading passages, interactives and more. Discovery Education is a wonderful tool because its resources have not only been vetted by educational professionals but are also aligned to state standards. While teachers can also use this website to assign different videos or channels for students to use in their research, the Discovery Education platform also includes the Studio tool which is a perfect resource with which students can present their findings. Finally, Discovery Education resources include citations, which help students in preparing their Work Cited pages.
In New Hampshire, Discovery Education’s resources are provided at no cost to school systems through our Department of Education. Discovery Education has similar arrangements in several other states, so be sure to check with your school administrators on availability in your district.
Citefast and CiteThisForMe are two citation creation websites that help students create their bibliography or works cited pages. Each of them contains multiple citation formats, such as MLA, APA, Harvard, and Chicago. They provide style guides, as well as FAQ sections to aid in citations. CiteThisForMe also contains information about the credibility of sources, which can be a great help to both students and teachers.
Using these resources and others, my students have improved their overall research skills, but also the breadth and authenticity of their research. These resources have also improved their “4 C” skills—Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity.
During the height of pandemic-fueled school closures, it was the 4C skills that helped educators find the work arounds that allowed us to maintain students’ continuity of learning. I believe that if we find tools that help students brush up on “hard” skills like research while helping build “soft” skills, we should take advantage of those resources and find even more ways to integrate them into instruction.
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