I have used this before to find the words in a text that show up quite frequently. This was a tool I used to help me pick which words should be included in instruction and on our word wall. Not only is this a good site for teachers to help make important decisions, it is also a fun activity to utilize with our students. Creating something using technology that is surrounded around words allows them to focus on their writing. It could be an interesting inquiry regarding how much students use the vocabulary words that are taught in class in their academic writing. To give you an example of the wordle website and how it can be used for vocabulary, I created a wordle cloud of this paragraph. Notice how the words I used most often are HUGE and those used only once or twice are quite small.
You are able to change the font and color schemes and do a bunch of fun stuff with the arrangement of the words on your page.
Anyway, as promised, today we are moving on to another topic. When reflecting on my previous 2 years of teaching, I have found that some of my most successful lessons have been when I used or created a game-like way to learn content. For example, when teaching about ancient Mesoamerica (Olmecs, Aztecs, Mayans, Incas), my students were not getting very excited about the content like I thought they might. So, when looking at my student body, I realized I had quite a few sports players in my class. Since they were generally very active in my class, I decided to take a risk. Fashioning a ring out of paper, I taped it sideways on the wall like the first team sport. I showed a short clip from The Road to El Dorado of the game and let my students determine what the objectives were and observe what the rules might be. Then I made a ball out of paper and explained we were going to play this sport with a few twists. We split the class into 2 teams. Every time they made the ball through the ring, they got a point. If they missed, they had to answer a question correctly, or support their answer if it was a "what do you think" question, in order to receive the point. Some of my better questions sparked conversations, thoughts, and debates that placed the game on hold. My students were finally showing excitement, and all I had to do was spend like 12 cents on paper and tape supplies.
There are other ways to re-create this type of game. A teacher could put two bins on the side and do the same type of point arrangement. The way points are awarded could be changed to your liking. This type of game can be easily used for a review activity. In fact, a very similar activity was related to vocabulary instruction in my Vocabulary Games post.
Throughout the next week, I'll be sharing some of the game-type activities that I have utilized in class. To bring your attention to another game we have played, refer to my Human Bingo post.
One thing I am researching/reading about right now is the use of video games in the classroom. This I haven't done yet, so I am looking at different sites and viewpoints of it. Today I found the following website, and thought I would share it (Games Work in Education).
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