What's Happening in 2A?: Wordle

Friday, August 21, 2009

Wordle

I'm sure some of you are thinking, 'What is a wordle??' A wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

So...today I had the kids tell me words that described their last 2 days in school. It took them a while to get going, but once they got going they thought of a lot of words!! As you can see from our wordle, the word "cool" is the biggest. That's because they used that word many times -- evidently they think second grade is pretty cool:) I sent home a black and white copy today and told them I would post the color copy on our blog. You can see it here: first day wordle

I hope you enjoy...your kids really did!!!

1 comment:

Shirley SovereignAugust 26, 2009 at 4:45 PM
Hi 2A! I am going to be following your blog as you can see. I like your Wordle and am happy that you think second grade is cool. I also liked the way you were listening when I visited your class last week. I enjoyed learning about how you are going to do the Morning Meeting in your class!
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Comprehension Skills and Strategies

Distinguish Fact and Opinion: Your child learned that facts are statements that can be proved. Opinions are what someone believes. The words I believe, I think, and in my view are clues that someone is expressing an opinion. Most students are able to state a fact; however, opinions are more challenging. Please practice this at home.

Sequence Events: Sequence is the order in which event take place. Clue words such as first, next, then, and last help readers know when events occur. When your child is summarizing have them sequence the events using the clue words.

Make Inferences: This is a strategy that readers use to understand what they are reading. When making an inference, readers need to fill in information that the author did not include. Readers must combine what they know with details from the text.
Pictures and words (text clues) + background knowledge (what we know) = an inference

Summarize: A summary is a paragraph or a statement in your own words that gives the most important ideas from the text that was read. Step 1: find the main ideas from the selection. Step 2: shorten and combine those ideas.

Categorize and Classify: We can categorize and classify objects, evens, ideas, and characters by how they are alike and how they fit into groups. When students are reading they can find types of things that are similar and group them into the same category.

Monitor Comprehension: Students must ALWAYS monitor their comprehension while they are reading. If they don't understand what was read they need to reread it. When readers are confused they can use "fix-up" strategies. Here is a list of those strategies:
*reread more slowly
*look up words
*read on
*use picture clues
*summarize
*ask for help