Monday, June 15, 2009
The Many Benefits of Wordle
In tutoring the other day, I introduced my tutee to Wordle. Early in the week we did a get to know you activity where I had him answer a series of questions about himself. After our session, I put all of his answer into www.wordle.net and created a word bubble about him. I even changed the colors to make it the colors of his favorite team, cardinal and gold. I gave it to him at our next tutoring session and he LOVED it! He was very curious about the website and wanted to try it out for himself. I decided to have him write a store (using a picture as a prompt) and put it into wordle. This brought up some great conversations. He was curious why they didn’t include all of his words and this brought up a discussion of articles and commonly used words. We also discussed the frequency of word usage and how that affects the word bubble that is created. Before using this in a real situation, I had not thought of the many possible conversations that could be generated. I was excited that he enjoyed the website and that we were able to benefit from a few teachable moments. Here is the word bubble we created for his story titled Captain Underpants Saves the Day.
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I am planning on using this site with my tutee tomorrow. I want to focus on phrasing with fluency. We are going to read a Dr. Suess book and focus on the rhymes. I think making a Wordle picture of the phrases she writes will be a fun way to see the rhyming words!
ReplyDeleteI love that when I use something with a child, they bring up things I had never thought about before! I am sure you did not plan on using wordle for a mini lesson on articles. Children's questions often times inspire lessons for me or become a great chance to stop and do mini lessons. I love that you put his story into wordle. That is a great idea. I previously used it with my tutee, but not in this way. This is something I definitely want to try!
ReplyDeleteI enjoy your idea. I think Wordle is very cool, but its a technology that I find very hard to integrate, though it seems a little easier in a one-on-one setting. Great idea! I might hafta steal it!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing an actual student product and classroom idea! It is interesting how the conversation around the picture could be what is actually important to the learning process.
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