Ashley Rockey and I wanted to try a tech project that our 1st and 4th graders could work on collaboratively. We decided to have them create Word Clouds. We used the site
http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm. It is pretty simple to use. Before doing this project together, I had my 4th graders practice using it first. We were studying adverbs in our reading unit, so I had them make a list of adverbs and put them together in a Word Cloud. It worked well to have them try it first before using it with their 1st grade buddy. There are a couple of examples of their Adverb Word Clouds below. We printed them in black in white (saving the color ink for our buddy project).
We met with our buddies today. Even though it was a bit cramped in the computer labs with around 45 kiddos, it went pretty well. The kids all came into the lab with a list of words or phrases about Rousseau School. We thought this would be a great Word Cloud to create since we are getting ready to celebrate Rousseau's 50th anniversary on Sunday. They took turns typing the words and phrases and helped each other spell the words correctly. The 4th graders knew how to use the ~ symbol to put words together. The students did a good job of collaborating on this fun project! It would be great to work with our new buddies again!
I loved working with buddies. I thought they did a nice job considering it was our first time working together. I would be happy to do it again. They also look nice hanging up for the birthday celebration and students got that extra exposure to Word Cloud.
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome! My students would love to use this word cloud. I think I'm going to use this as a pre-writing strategy to share ideas for writing. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of having our upper grades help the younger students learn. I'm sure both groups loved the lesson. What a nice way to review adverbs, verbs, pronouns, etc. that they can keep.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea to put the two grades together for this project. I like how you focused on adverbs...you could easily do this for many different skill sets.
ReplyDeleteHow creative! I need to use Word Clouds more often. And I love how you worked collaboratively with older students. I'll have to think how to mimic your idea with our fourth grade buddies for a project. Thanks for getting me excited about using word clouds again!
ReplyDeleteWow! This is so cool! I have never used or heard about Word Clouds before. I can't wait to try it with my students!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the link to the word cloud. This is a terrific idea for collaborating with different grades/levels of students.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea! It didn't even cross my mind to do a technology project with our Kindergarten book buddies. This Word Cloud could be useful for coming up with rhyming words. I'll have to consider this for next year!
ReplyDeleteI have always wanted to do a word cloud. I thought maybe I would have our 4th grade kiddos make one on the person they are researching for their biographies. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteI love word clouds...quick, easy, and the kids love them. I made a family Christmas card one year as a word cloud. one of my favorites...lots of people wanting to know "How did you make that?"
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