Word Clouds

By Meredith via Wordle

When my Kindergarten students first begin using the SHIFT key, they practice typing their name during a Wordle assignment.  Each child is assigned a computer in the lab.  They each open Wordle from our Learning Links (direct link to Create, not the actual home page), then type their name three times so it will appear the largest in the word cloud.  Students begin rotating to each computer, typing their name in Title Case, until they have typed their name in everyone's Wordle page.  After they click Create, they choose their design.  We print these so the children can take home a class list of student names.  The possibilities with Wordle are endless--what about a Wordle highlighting the Tier II vocabulary in a book or action verbs?

*Double names (only in the South) can be tricky.  Some word cloud apps use ~ to connect the two names or quotes.

Common Core Phenomenon

When have all the states been in agreement on anything in education? Well, here is the beginning of a new era. The Common Core Standards are here. Gone are the days where students in Alabama learn completely different material than in Georgia or Arkansas.  Now educators are tied to a common language and common standards across the US.  We are finally uniting on what we want our students to know.  Only six states have not adopted the Common Core Standards.  Surprisingly, Texas is not on board yet; usually they are innovators in educational programs and initiatives.

Borrowed from Common Core

This Monday, teachers from our school system got together to discuss the new standards and deepen our understanding of how they were developed.  We will implement the new standards beginning next year. 

Dot Sub Translation Tool

Dot Sub is an online translation tool that lets users subtitle any movie in any language.  Users can work together to transcribe movie files, and privacy settings can share movies with friends or the world. Although the user must type the captions for different frames, Dot Sub will translate it.  I can use this with my student who speaks a very uncommon language, but I can see this being beneficial for Spanish teachers and other foreign language teachers.

Digital Storytelling with Little Bird Tales

Last week, I added to another grad student's wiki entry about the positive benefits of using digital storytelling with students learning English. The best thing about digital storytelling is that all students can learn through this form of writing.  You can check out my entry here at Web 4 All Learners.  Little Bird Tales is a site that offers a place for children to create stories and record their own narration (or add text, or both!).  Children can upload their own artwork or pictures.  One of my favorite highlights of this site is that it is free of advertising.

Voki Classroom

One of my first grad. school classes featured Vokis for classroom use. Now Voki has its own site especially geared to education (Voki Classroom). The educator's Voki site offers teachers the options to manage students, manage classes and lessons, review Vokis, or showcase student work.  I am going to extend the idea of Build Your Wild Self and have the children create their own Vokis.  I can create Vokis to explain computer lab tasks or maybe a video podcast.  The children can use their avatars to present their favorite library book, a vacation experience, record a letter to a friend, or even record themselves reading a short story.

Watch Know Learn [.org]

Watch Know Learn is an excellent source for educational videos that children and teacher can access from anywhere.  The age filter helps narrow down videso, but there is also a search by subject option.  It draws videos from You Tube (in a site-embedded player) like this one that was under Math>Number Sense>Counting to 100.


From the site:  WatchKnowLearn has indexed over 20,000 educational videos, placing them into a directory of over 3,000 categories. The videos are available without any registration or fees to teachers in the classroom and to students at home 24/7. Users can dive into our innovative directory or search for videos by subject and age level. Video titles, descriptions, age level information, and ratings are all edited for usefulness. Our Web site invites broad participation in a new kind of wiki system, guided by teachers. We have had a tremendously positive response from educators to the website. If we continue to work together, we can create an incredible, free, educational resource for students across the world.

What have you found?

Word Work

In any elementary grade, word work is crucial to understanding spelling patterns in reading and writing.  Spelling City is more than just a spelling helper.  It allows teachers to create lists of spelling words, word families, vocabulary words, sight words(for free!) .  From there, students can practice the words in a traditional spelling test review format, take a spelling test (which is graded and gives the user the option of printing results), or play games to work with the words.  Children can choose from writing sentences, Hang Mouse, word searches, unscramble, find the missing letter, audio word match, and more! 

Screenshot of Audio Word Match (a sight word list)

In first grade, I would add Spelling City to my literacy centers throughout the week.  Children could choose from any game they wanted to play.  On Fridays, we would use the laptops or visit the computer lab to take the test.  In about 15 minutes, I had all of the tests completed, graded, and printed.  In Kindergarten, I use it mostly for sight word games and word families.  Audio Word Match is my favorite for the younger set because each time a player clicks on a tile, the word is spoken clearly.  The reinforcement leaves out the guesswork of sight words, and encourages automatic recognition.