Word Clouds

Have you tried the new app by ABCya called Word Clouds? It is currently free and is phenomenally easy to use! If you are not familiar with word clouds the idea is that you get a graphical representation of your text. Words that are used in higher frequency are represented larger. 

This app is phenomenally easy to use. My kiddos learned how to use it in about 5 minutes. The next day, they taught another first grade class how to use the app. If a first grader can teach someone how to use it, you know it's easy!

We used this app to create a word cloud for our moms as part of their Mother's Day gift. We did a bit of brainstorming together on chart paper to get the ideas flowing. Students were then asked to write the name they call their mom at the top of their paper (mom, momma, mommy, etc). They then numbered their paper from 1-10 and thought of 10 (or more if they could) words that would describe their mom.

When putting their words into the app, each student typed the word "mom" four times so that it would appear larger than the others and then proceeded to type in their other words. When they were done they were able to choose the font, color and directionality of their words.

These turned out wonderful and were a nice addition to our Mother's Day gifts.

One your mark... get set...

Go!!

The beginning of the new school year begins tomorrow for me (without kids) and our Open House is Wednesday evening. Today has brought a mad dash to finish up some Pinterest-inspired projects for Open House and the beginning of the year.

My room decor is dog-themed and I've incorporated quite a bit of bright, almost neon colors, around the room. (I forgot to take pics when I was at school yesterday. I'll have to try and remember tomorrow)  That being said, these great little "flower sticks" will add the perfect touch for Open House. I found the idea on Ginger Snaps. She has quite a few other fantastic neon printables as well. Needless to say, I was in heaven going through her blog! I'm going to place one of these at each of my students' spots along with the "Me Bag" below and a raffle ticket.

Here is the "Me Bag"  I found on Mrs. Heeren's Happenings. I have these printed and stapled to lunch bags. I'm going to tell students that this is their homework for the 1st day of school. I'm excited to see what they will bring to share with the rest of the class. I think  this will be a fantastic way for all of us to get to know each other a bit better and break the ice on the 1st day. You can find the printable here.

Last, I put together a little raffle gift. I've never done this before but thought it would be a fun incentive for the families that come. I found the Chinese-style box at The Dollar Store and then filled it with Dollar Store items. I filled it with glitter glue, silly string, grape scented erasers, playdough, and a pack of telling time flashcards. Each kiddo will have a raffle ticket at their table spot along with the other items above. The raffle tickets are also from Mrs. Heeren's blog. They are part of her Open House Activities pack which you can find here.

This is by far one of my favorites though. I simply put my kiddos names into Wordle and then played with the font, color, and layout until I found one that I liked that matched my classroom colors for the year. I'm going to frame this and display it somewhere in my classroom or outside of our door. 

Whew! Needless to say even though it was the last day of summer vacation, when I wasn't taking the dog to the vet or getting ice cream with my kiddos, I was working on school stuff or scouring the dollar store for those last minute odds n' ends for my classroom. Ahhhhh... I now need to stay off of Pinterest until school starts for fear of finding another idea that I'll want to implement prior to the kids coming. 

philosophy

I spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks writing, rewriting, tweaking, and reflecting on my philosophy of education for a project. It's been awhile since I've really sat down and dug into my philosophy and so it felt good to dig into it. It made me realize how much my core philosophies have stayed the same over the years but how much other aspects have changed with the times (mainly tech integration and 21st century learning skills and how they benefit kids). When it was done, I pasted it into Wordle to see what main pieces popped and to my delight, my main values were right at the forefront. I love Wordle and the visual twist it puts upon writing.

On a totally different front, funny story from school today which is unrelated to technology. As I was finishing up with a mini lesson on choosing good fit books with my class I had made a comment to one of my little cherubs that he needed to have his "brain in the group". He was totally baffled by how I knew he wasn't paying attention as my back was turned, so I explained to him that I have eyes in the back of my head. Well, as we dispersed to start our book shopping for the week, one of my little girls came up to me and ever so seriously said to me, "Mrs. Malchow, when I'm an adult will I have eyes in the back of my head?"  Absolutely priceless!!
Have a fantastic weekend!!!

25 sites in 50 minutes

For those who follow this blog or check in regularly, my colleague Tracy and I presented a workshop during our district inservice titled, "25 sites in 50 minutes". We talked about all of the sites listed below.

At the bottom of this post I have embedded a Lino wall for you to share great sites that you use or can't live without. Please add your "can't live without 'em" sites to our wall. Enjoy the following links- hopefully you will find something new that you can use as well! If you have any comments about the sites listed, please feel free to leave a comment!

Teacher Resources

Tumblebooks

Storyline Online

Smilebox
Shwup
Voki/ Monkey Business
proteacher.net
Teacher Tipster

Beth Newingham

Ms. Winston

Garrison

Harvey's Homepage

Sqworl 

WallWisher / Lino

Interactive, online kid sites

Wordle

ABCya word clouds

Abcya!
Arcademic Skill Builders

Young National Geographic

National Geographic Kids

Spelling City

Starfall

Giggle Poetry
Letter Generator
Mad Libs Junior
Digital Storytelling

Now it's your turn- what are some of the great sites that you use that you can't live without. Please add them to a sticky note for all of us to learn from each other. Just put your mouse on the blue "Share your favorite site" bar and pull down a sticky note of your choice.

To see others' posts, grab and slide the background up, down, left, or right. You can also hover over the blue tab on the bottom right which will slide out and show you where the various posts are located on the wall. Also, if leaving a link, in order for it to be clickable link, you will need to use the http:// address.

Need a primary level Wordle-type site?? Here it is...

I was jumping for joy when I found this site earlier this year. I've used Wordle in the past with 2nd graders and although they did a great job there were a lot of choices for them in regards to color, style, etc that seemed to take some of them far too long to decide on their final product. There was also the possibility of coming across inappropriate Wordle's in the gallery which was something I was a bit uncomfortable with. Well... fear not- there is a solution and it's ABCya! Word Clouds.

Just to give you an example of what an ABCya! word cloud looks like, I pasted the paragraph above into the word cloud generator and here's what my creation ended up looking like. It doesn't take out as many of the insignificant words as Wordle does, but to me, that far outweighs the other issues.

Once students have typed or cut and pasted their text into the generator they are able to change the font, the color scheme (only 8 to choose from), and change the format (only 3 layouts available). ABCya's Word Clouds also give you the option to print your creation or save it, something that Wordle made difficult for 1st/2nd graders to do.

This would be great for students to use with a short story or a poem. I personally have used it for students' poems for our May baskets as well as for cloze-sentence projects. It just gives it a little different flair and really appeals to our digital native learners.