Today I used Wordle in the classroom for the first time. I loved it! More importantly, the kids loved it!
We have been working on thinking about our reading in reading workshop and today’s mini-lesson was about using our thinking to write a paragraph explaining our thoughts. We were reading Sandra Cisneros’ “Eleven” (one of my personal favorites) and the kids were going to jot their thoughts while we read.
However, I decided to Wordle the story first and presented it my class under the document camera. I explained how Wordle worked and then we talked about the words that seemed most prominent. My students then used that thinking to make some predictions about the plot of the story and the direction it would take. It prompted some really great ideas and the visual really kept the kids interested. I can definitely foresee using this a lot this year!
Filed under: technology | Tagged: document camera, web 2.0, wordle |
The Reading Zone 
Oh I’m SO glad this worked well! I posted about working with Wordle in the classroom a few weeks ago (http://www.msdrummond.com/?p=154), and one of the things I mentioned was the possibility of using it to preview non-fiction text to predict what an article may be about or help students determine important new vocabulary words. If it worked with fiction, it’ll work with non, too!