I was working with our fifth grade this week on a really fun project in Tech Connect. They had been given an assignment by their writing teacher to write a paragraph describing what they thought Christmas meant to them. This was then going to be made into a Wordle that they would create in Tech’. It was fascinating to see their paragraphs go from a ‘blow by blow’ description of what happened during the holiday in their family, to a much more descriptive and insightful paragraph. Once they realized what they were writing would have a profound effect on how their wordle would look they had a whole new approach. I could really hear and see each student start to look critically and therefore think critically at their own work. Some of the fun things they talked about and made sure that their wordle showed were words like, Santa, Santa Claus, Christ, Jesus, Born, Christmas Tree, Family, brother, sister, Mom, Dad, Aunt, Grandma, Best, taste, caroling, and Church. Some of the descriptive words I saw were things like, delicious, scrumptious, excitement, excited, and believe. We had two boys incorporate their own name a few times more than anything else so that their own name showed up the biggest. You see, in wordle the more you use a word the bigger it becomes. It was such a simple idea and a really good way to have the students look at their work in a critical way. Here is the wordle for this post!
