"The Early Bird gets the Wordle"

Wordle!

What is Wordle?
Wordle is a free tool for creating word clouds from texts of your choosing or your own mind that is simple to use. The clouds that you create show how prevalent a word is within a text. When you insert text from a chapter about water in your science book, Wordle would put the most frequently used words, such as "Water," from that chapter in a larger print in comparison to lesser used words. You also have the luxury of customizing the size, shape, orientation, and color of the generated Wordle. The only exception when entering text is that you need to leave out all punctuation, it isn't needed. Here's an example of the Create screen:

Who can use Wordle?
Wordle can be used by anyone with access to the internet!

When or how could you, as the science teacher, use Wordle?

Uses for Wordle:

• Generate a Wordle for students to use at the beginning or end of a unit
• When students need a visual representation of the content you are teaching, you as the teacher can create a Wordle to help 
• Your students can use Wordle to summarize qualitative data or their readings
• You, as the teacher,can use Wordle as a supplement to a lesson
• Wordle can be used to present vocabulary in a fun and engaging manner by your students or yourself
• Students can use Wordle as a means of review before a test
• As an entrance/exit slip: Specifically, you could have your class create a Wordle that contains information about what they learned,questions they had, or any other comment and have them upload them to the class website as a virtual "permission slip" that shows they participated that day
• Teachers can assign a Wordle as a response to a reading/chapter
• As a bulletin board filler: Students can generate a Wordle about what they think about a topic(ie: What is Science?)and post them onto a bulletin board outside of the classroom
• Students can also use Wordle as a means of reflection

Where can I find additional Wordles?
http://www.wordle.net/

A couple of examples...

What does this Wordle represent?

This Wordle (taken from the website itself) shows words that go along with a Biology unit. The most frequently used terms are Biology, Organisms, Cells, Species, and DNA for example. Other words that are used less often may or may not be equally important as these so it's important to remember to prioritize what words you insert to create a Wordle.

Could I use Wordle to help students understand Common Core, NGSS, or NCES?

Sure! I've included a Wordle that uses terminology from the 6th grade NC Essential Science Standard 6.P.1 and its clarifying objectives 6.P.1.1 through 6.P.1.3. This standard says:

Essential Standard Clarifying Objectives 

6.P.1 Understand the properties of waves and the wavelike property of energy in earthquakes, light and sound waves.6.P.1.1 Compare the properties of waves to the wavelike property of energy in earthquakes, light and sound. 6.P.1.2 Explain the relationship among visible light, the electromagnetic spectrum, and sight. 6.P.1.3 Explain the relationship among the rate of vibration, the medium through which vibrations travel, sound and hearing.

Put into the Wordle Create Tab, it comes out looking something similar to the following Wordle:

The possibilities are endless with Wordle! Go online and try it out for yourself! 

Using Kahoot in the classroom!

What is Kahoot?

Kahoot is a FREE technology for students and teachers!

Teachers can use it to give a quiz, facilitate class discussions, gather class opinions, introduce a class debate, or take a survey.  The possibilities are endless!

Teachers simply go to www.getkahoot.com and make a quiz, discussion, or survey.  Once finished their Kahoot is given a game pin that they can share with their students.

Students go to www.kahoot.it/#/com on their phones, laptops, ipods, etc. and enter in the game pin their teacher gives them.  Once the game pin is entered students can create a nickname if they choose or they can remain anonymous.  After all students are entered the teacher presses start on the main screen and the game begins!

How can you use Kahoot in a science Classroom?
There are so many ways, you can use it to give a laboratory quiz, to ask students an open ended question like What is their favorite thing about science?  It can be used as a graded assignment or for fun to see what students are thinking or what they already know.

Here is a fun laboratory quiz pin that could be used, GamePin: 781233
: https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/3cd561a4-0e8e-4e6c-a38c-5818d618439c, The teacher simply goes to this link and has the students type in the game pin and it begins.

The best part is that there are so many great Kahoots already made and it is simple and easy to make your own that fits your specific class needs!  It is a great way to start discussions and get students excited about using technology in the classroom.  Kahoot is great tool, it can be made anonymous so that every student has a chance to answer and voice their opinions with out worrying about what others may think!  At the end of each Kahoot teachers also have the option to get feedbacks and results so they can keep all the answers if they would like to.

Ideas for use in the science classroom:

-Use it to introduce a new concept or topic.

-Use it to reinforce knowledge of a learned topic.

-Use it to lead peer discussions and reflections.

-It can really be used with any science topic to do all of these things and it is fun because it engages students and introduces them to new technology while still making learning fun.

-You can even have students make their own Kahoots! and they can play against each other which is super fun in the classroom.

Goals for Our Science Students

Our group of middle and high school science teachers-to-be shared their goals for their science students in the lesson yesterday. They will be revising them at the end of the course. We are also taking this opportunity to learn about blogging with students and anticipating issues before they come up (e.g. students must understand the difference between a post, a comment and a reply; emphasize that everyone's name (or chosen nickname) must be on their comment/ reply, there should be no "anonymous" comments (unless you as a teacher decides a specific activity is better suited for anonymous replies); the importance and usefulness of labels/ tags, etc.

Here are our lists of goals. Please feel free to comment on your classmates' list:

First Day of Fall 2015 Semester

Today was the first day of classes at AppState and the first meeting of GS4403 "Teaching Science in Middle and High School" Fall 2015 Edition. It's a great group of aspiring science teachers and they hit the road running. Meet the future of science education...

 

Based on our "teaching concerns" snowball toss, this semester we will be working together to tackle the following concerns...

The making of...

We'll keep you posted.