Ground Control to Major Tom- Wonderments

Our next course Psychology of Classroom Learning and Management featured a whole lot of work and didn't get any feedback until the very end. We worked and we worked and we wondered.

One of our tasks was to write "Wonderments." What are wonderments, you ask?

Well according to our outline:

•  "Wonderments are questions that the reader poses on the author as the textbook, and/or lecture material is encountered. They typically start with a "I wonder (if, about, whether, when, what etc.).." It is also helpful to the audience is a page number is inluded sp that the student relies" can be informed..Also reasons for the wonderments are sometimes included, and possible solutions." 

Now it's not that I thought the idea of "wonderments" was totally stupid or anything, but we were required to read massive amounts of stuff and then write some 60 wonderments and then reply to our classmates wonderments. It got to the point that all I did was wonder. I would read things and I would come up with some serious things to wonder about but sometimes I'd come up with the stupidest things to wonder about, and then I'd find really sarcastic things to wonder about.

--> Here are some of my silly, sarcastic and odd wonderments:

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• I wonder why I like Alfie Kohn’s idea best. Is it just that I like the name Alfie? What's all about, Alfie?
• I wonder why my puppy decided to eat my textbook while I was on the phone. She particularly enjoyed chapter 2 on phonemes. Page 47 was her favourite. I wonder if the story “The dog ate my homework," could actually be true from time to time. 
• I wonder why when the chapter talks about adjunct questions (pg 356-364) it doesn’t use adjunct questions in its own narrative.
• I wonder why sometimes researchers have to prove again and again ideas that we intuitively know are correct.
• When reading all these techniques to improve reading and understanding, I wonder how the world got to where it is. There were no experts in the beginning.
• I wonder why an author trying to convey the importance of first sentences would start with a poor sentence himself. (Pg124 sentence “Suppose that you were to write a short biographical story, such as an essay on how a water faucet works or a business letter.” What is the “business letter” doing in this sentence?????
• I wonder how people who write about writing, don’t see how their own poor writing is so distracting.
• I wonder why the writer refers to the cave man. Were there no cave women?
• I wonder what would have happened if humans had twelve fingers. Would our number system have been based on 12?
• On page 186 Schoenfeld noted, “ There is reason to believe that such suspension of sense-making develops in school, as a result of school.” I wonder if I was the only one who thought this was funny.
• The Skep author says that Canter and Canter believe that children are not innately motivated to behave in school. I wonder what Maria Montessori would say about that..nevermind, I think she would say “nonsense!”
• I wonder how I managed to get through school and be successful without once getting candy or stickers.
• I wonder why I relate to Felix Autnrieth’s comment, “I think assertive discipline is the best way to kill creativity, curiosity, self-expression, motivation, logical reasoning in our children. Let us breed another generation of bore and dull adults because it works so well.” Oh yeah, because he's right.
• I wonder why I think of the Gestapo, while I read about Positive Discipline.
• I wonder when I can just read something without having to wonder about everything.

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