HIP AND WITH-IT IN THE CLASSROOM

I'm really trying to take the hip and with-it-ness thing seriously. Although I'm not totally sure I fully understand its value, I'm trying to twitter at least once or twice a day. At least once a day, I log on to the English Companion ning, where I feel a little like I do when I go to Lowe's or Home Depot- there's a lot of really cool stuff, and I wish I could figure out a way to find what I need or enter into the conversation in a methodical way. 

Most of all, I want to be a hip and with-it teacher. More and more, I believe that our kids don't learn, or even think, in the same ways that I do. I'm making a conscious effort, then, to use more technology with my students. This afternoon, I tried WORDLE with my fourth and fifth grade intervention group. We are just finishing a book called STATUE OF LIBERTY. We are working on identifying main idea and differentiating between important and interesting). The kids have been taking notes about important ideas on post-it notes. 

Today, I asked them to summarize the book, then they took turns sitting next to me as I typed the summaries into Wordle. (Originally I had intended for them to type their own, but I couldn't get Wordle to work on the computers in our technology lab, and I didn't want it to be a seven day activity, with one kid per day typing their summary on my one little laptop.  I asked them to use their summaries to predict which word would show up the largest on Wordle. They chose colors, fonts, vertical/horizontal alignment, etc. We printed two copies per kid- one to take home and one to post in the hall. I wanted to import one into here, but hip and with-it gal that I am, I still can't quite get the hang of that (or importing Franki and MaryLee's 21st century logo either!)

Anyway, the kids loved it! And I mean LOVED IT!!! It wasn't exactly perfect, but I think it really did help them to try to pick out important ideas and words. I want to play with this tool some more! I think it has a lot of possibilities!