A very functional royal wedding

I'd forgotten how much I love Wordle.

Had a lovely 2 hour Entry Level (E1 through to E3) Functional Maths and English lesson earlier this week, based on the royal wedding. Objectives were to encourage the use of accurate positional vocabulary and to improve the use of clear (written and spoken) directions.


I hadn't met the group before (but they all knew each other well) so came up with the following starter to help me to remember all their names and help them improve their use of positional vocabulary.


I asked one student to introduce himself clearly and to then tell me where he was sitting in relation to another student. (I modelled this to the group first, using the rather advanced example of diagonally opposite which provoked quite a lot of discussion.)

So, for example, the student might say: "I'm Kamil."
Then, I would say: "Hello Kamil. Tell me where you are in relation to another person in the group."
Kamil might then say: "I'm sitting next to Mona."
Mona would then introduce herself (the repetition of her name helping me to remember it) and then describe her position in relation to to another student in the room.
...and so on round the entire group.

Wordle 1. Individual positional words used by students.

Interestingly, some students spontaneously offered to then reverse what they had said and describe the other student's position in relation to themselves. E.g. Molly is on my right. I am on Molly's left.


Whilst this was going on my LSA was typing all the positional words each student used into Wordle (he also copied and pasted them into a Word document for future use). When everyone had introduced themselves the create button was clicked and Wordle 1 appeared. 


At that time I couldn't remember how to keep words together as phrases so Wordle 1 shows you all the individual positional words the students used.


Later, I remembered that to keep words together in Wordle you use a tilde ~ between related words. I edited the saved Word document accordingly and the resulting Wordle 2 shows the exact phrases students used.


Sounds simple but the students were enthralled with the Wordle. I've told them that I plan to repeat this activity several sessions later to check their learning and see if they are using a greater range of positional vocabulary. I particularly want to improve the accurate use of left and right in written and spoken directions.


I also successfully recited all their names (they insisted on testing me!) - no mean feat as my memory is terrible at the moment.

Wordle 2. Using tilde symbols to keep words together in phrases.

The nice thing is that the activity can be differentiated (by outcome) for all levels. Higher level students can use more advanced vocabulary such as adjacent or use angles and rotations in their descriptions. You could also ask students to estimate the distance they are sitting from another person. 


If you like our Wordle design, we used: League Gothic font, a mostly horizontal layout with straighter edges and the organic carrot colour scheme! 






In case you're wondering what all this has to do with the royal wedding: I used it as a lead in to watching two videos about the wedding route. Whilst watching these, students were asked to look out for and list famous London landmarks and we discussed how you can use landmarks to help clarify written or spoken directions. 
Video 1: Royal wedding route in 40 seconds
Video 2: Google maps Royal wedding procession route in 3D  


Landmarks spotted included Buckingham Palace, the London Eye and the Cenotaph (interesting spelling discussion on that one!).


I embedded the videos into the end of a very good Royal Wedding PPT I obtained from TES resources. At the start of the PPT all students were asked to write one correctly punctuated sentence about the royal wedding (on individual whiteboards). As a learning check, at the close of the PPT, they were asked to write two sentences about something new they had found out about the upcoming wedding. (More interesting discussion about Kate's head-ware in slide 2! I just couldn't remember the word "fascinator" but a savvy student put me right!)

Adapted from a TES resource - see main text for details.

We also took a short but successful diversion into family trees (yet another chance to use positional vocabulary) using a drag and drop Royal one (again from TES) on the Smartboard as an introduction. Students then had a quick go at drawing their own family trees on individual whiteboards.


This was followed by paired work: drawing routes to various destinations (canteen, library, reception, etc.) on a college map and then following their planned route around the college and writing accompanying directions. The writing frame we used was adapted from this one on skillsworkshop.org. 


I also embedded a Google satellite map of the college into the PPT. This was a huge hit and great for students to annotate on the Smartboard. I will be making future use of this map when we do work on 2D and 3D shapes


In my next session - before I embark on my still unplanned simulation of the AV voting system - I will hand out anonymous typed-up-by-me copies of the directions written by the students (with the name of the destination omitted) to different pairs of students to test. 


Functional Skills coverage and range statements covered in the session included:
Maths
Describe position (E1)
Extract, use & compare information from lists, tables, simple charts /graphs (E3)
Recognise and use 2D representations of 3D objects (L2)
Speaking, listening and communication
Communicate information so that the meaning is clear (E2)
Identify the main points of short explanations and instructions (E2)
Reading
Read and understand simple instructions and directions (E2)
Use organisational features to locate information (E3)
Writing
Use written words and phrases to present (and record) information. E1 (E2)
Construct simple (compound) sentences using full stops (correct upper/lower case). E1 (E2)
Sequence writing logically and clearly. (E3)

Hilda Taba (part 2), Wordle, and numeracy

In one of my earlier posts (Aug 16, 2008) on Wordle I said:

"I reckon this idea could be adapted for numeracy: sorting out maths vocabulary words; ranking measures in order of size; sorting measures into length, weight or capacity; sorting shapes (well, names of shapes) according to properties; etc."

Well, site-contributor Dave Norgate has speedily proved my point: he's created a set of numeracy Wordles that does everything I wished for and more! There are four Wordles in his resource – covering 2D shapes, maths vocabulary, odd and even numbers, and metric units. Dave has also very kindly provided fill-in charts for two word clouds: one provides a structure for straightforward sorting (maths vocabulary); the other demands sorting followed by ordering (metric units).

Linking this back to my previous discussion regarding Hilda Taba - you might like to think of a Wordle cloud as the collection of data (the first stage or strategy in her model) and Dave's blank charts as the next stage where data is organised so that students can visualise and attain concepts.

The number of ‘phases’ in each stage seems to have been extended since Taba’s work was published in 1971. It varies with each source that I look at (see references at the end this post). Here’s my attempt at a summary – but I make no claim to expertise in learning theory.

Stage 1 (three phases)
Concept formation – collecting data through class brainstorming (maybe into Wordle - see below!), individual lists, answers to questions, etc. 3 phases: list, group, label.

Stage 2
Attaining concepts - organising data using: whiteboard, smartboard, flip chart, fill-in tables, handout, Wordle (more on this below), etc.

Stage 3 (I’m not sure how many phases!)
Develop generalisations, compare, explain, apply principles (predicting).

Anyway – I must wander back to some practical uses of Wordle…

Of course you don’t have to start at Stage 1 - phase 1 (listing) to make use of Taba’s model. All the existing (as of Sept 6th 08) Wordle resources on www.skillsworkshop.org provide pre-collected data in a word cloud; the words or numbers in the cloud may also be partially grouped. Examples of these include (all kindly contributed by Dave N):
Sorting nouns and verbs (and then listing alphabetically)
Identifying misspelt words
Identifying 2D shapes
Sorting odd and even numbers

In all these cases you are starting at Taba’s Stage 1 - phase 2 or 3. However, you could (assuming you have a PC, data projector and Internet access to Wordle) collect the data live in-class and start at Stage 1 - phase 1.

This can be done through brainstorming and/or careful questioning. Before you start you’ll need a clear objective. What concept do you want students to grasp? It could be naming the properties of 2D shapes, distinguishing between odd and even numbers, recognising metric measures and selecting appropriate units, etc. The questioning is crucial if you want to avoid too many stray words or groups in your Wordle. You’ve got to get the balance right: to prevent a wild goose chase you'll need to elicit plenty of relevant data (words) that allow learners to make connections and ‘get’ (attain) the concept.

I recommend enlisting a willing student to type-in the words – or, even better, pass a wireless keyboard around. If accurate spelling is a prerequisite for your Wordle – get the students to type into a Word document (with spellchecker turned on) and then paste the list into Wordle at the end of the brainstorming session. This also keeps Wordle a secret until the last minute – assuming your students haven’t seen it before!

Now, a great feature of Wordle is that, when using it live, you can delete words one by one from your cloud by right-clicking on them. You can use this to facilitate Taba’s crucial middle stage 2 and whittle your data down to one group.

For example, if you were creating a cloud similar to Dave’s (right) you could firstly delete (or ask students to delete) all the words that are not names of shapes or objects (e.g. addition, weigh, perimeter). This could be followed (amidst much discussion about properties, etc.) by deleting all the names of 3D shapes (for example) until you’re eventually left with a set of 2D shapes. If your group is working at Level 1 or 2 - keep going! The possibilities are endless - ask the students how they could regroup and classify what's left. Perhaps they'll suggest deleting those with more than four sides, or those with only one pair of parallel lines.

Of course, I’m not saying that Wordle is the answer to everything! For more advanced grouping and ordering you may well have to stick to the traditional whiteboard, fill-in table, matrix or chart method – although maybe you could have more than one Wordle going on at once!

I’ll leave you to think about Stage 3 and its generalisations and predictions...

References
Photo
http://imet.csus.edu/classic/tools_and_curriculum/images/TABA.JPG
I'm guessing this was taken in the 1950s – Taba was born in 1902

Taba, H., Durkin, M. C., Fraenkel, J. R., & NcNaughton, A. H. (1971). A teacher's handbook to elementary social studies: An inductive approach (2nd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Chapter 5 is available online at http://imet.csus.edu/classic/fundamentals/inductive/taba_handbook.htm (I’m not sure if this is a summary or the entire chapter as unfortunately I have not read the original – out of print – I’d love to see it though!).

There's also good clear coverage of Taba's model in Teaching Young Adults (Gill Turner, Joe Harkin, Trevor Dawn) RoutledgeFalmer 2001 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Teaching-Young-Adults-Post-compulsory-Education/dp/0415222842
This book uses a useful egg timer depiction. I'd better not reproduce it here because of copyright issues but if you search for the book in http://books.google.com/books you can preview various pages including the egg timer page 46.
The book also includes an extended Taba model (page 47). This extended version is great for planning: it's full of imperatives for learning objectives. For example, Stage 1-phase 1 not only suggests list but also collect, find, choose, bring, underline, highlight and tick. It also relates Taba's model to the Kolb / experiential learning cycle (page 48 - also viewable via Google books).

Wordle and Hilda Taba

I'm delighted to say that, since my earlier post on Using Wordle in the Classroom, I've received some new resource ideas from site-contributor Dave Norgate.





Find all the prepositions.










Sort the words into two columns - correctly spelt and misspelt.

These ideas will be appearing on the site sometime next week - complete with instructions, answer sheets and curriculum links.

I really like the idea of 'sorting' in the second picture (and 'listing' in the first). It brings back distant PGCE memories of Hilda Taba and her 'concept development model'.

Of course you could give your learners either of the pictures above with no instructions.

Why?

Well - this gets them thinking about the words (and the concepts). If they come up with the sorting or listing ideas themselves they'll be more engaged and have ownership of the resource.

Here's a few questions you could ask if needed.

These questions were inspired by information on this site http://www.lovinlearning.org/heroes/concept_attainment_Taba.htm

• What do you notice about these words?
• Do any of these words seem to belong together?
• Why would you group these words together?
• What would you call the groups?
• Could some of the words belong in other groups?
• Can you suggest other words that you could add to these groups?
• Can you make your own Wordle pictures?
• What if....

I reckon this idea could be adapted for numeracy: sorting out maths vocabulary words; ranking measures in order of size; sorting measures into length, weight or capacity; sorting shapes (well, names of shapes) according to properties; etc.

For more on Taba:
http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Taba_teaching_strategy_model
http://imet.csus.edu/classic/fundamentals/inductive/taba_handbook.htm
http://www.unf.edu/~jbosnick/jb/3324concfor.pdf
The PDF above can also be located from this menu page:
http://www.unf.edu/~jbosnick/jb/3324notes.htm (select Concept Formation)

There's also good clear coverage of Taba's model in Teaching Young Adults (Gill Turner, Joe Harkin, Trevor Dawn) RoutledgeFalmer 2001 (one of my PGCE set books). http://www.amazon.co.uk/Teaching-Young-Adults-Post-compulsory-Education/dp/0415222842

I’m sure there are lots more possibilities so I'll finish by repeating my request from the previous Wordle post: if you have any Wordle ideas you’d like to share please get in touch or leave a comment.

Using Wordle in the classroom

I’m addicted to Wordle and, in an attempt to justify the time I’ve spent on it lately, have come up with a few ideas for using it in literacy classes.

Wordle takes a list of words or a piece of text and creates a ‘word cloud’: the more times a word occurs in a text the larger it appears in the cloud. So, if you type ‘the [note lowercase initial letter] cat sat on the mat’ into Wordle the word ‘the’ appears (once) in a font twice the size of the other words.

I first came across Wordle about a month ago and I used it to create a thank you picture for all my site contributors. I extracted the names of all contributors (since January 2005) from the latest popular downloads listing. I’ve just made a new one (above) which includes all contributors’ names up to July 16 2008. Of course this is just a bit of fun and it does not mean that those who make one or two contributions are any less appreciated than those who make dozens!

A month on since my first use and I see that several improvements have been added: Wordle can now strip out common (i.e. Dolch) words, accept text from live feeds (RSS / Atom) such as a Blog, and can display the word cloud in a separate window (this allows you take large screen grabs, as I have done here, using the Print Screen key).


So, if you ever wanted visible proof that Dolch words are indeed the most common words simply paste a piece of text into Wordle and select the ‘do not remove common words’ from the ‘language’ menu.

Using the live feed feature I input the first 500 (different) words from this blog and you can see the results here. One with Dolch words, one without.







The first thing I noticed was that the word 'numeracy’ does not appear. I’ll have to try to redress that in future posts!

You can do lots of other fancy things in Wordle such as click on and delete particular words from a cloud; play around with fonts and colours; choose between vertical , horizontal or mixed orientation; and ask for words to be in ‘mostly alphabetical order’.





So, to return to my opening sentence...
Here’s just a few ideas I came up with. None took me more than 5 or 10 minutes to prepare and I’m sure there are lots more possibilities - if you have any you’d like to share please let me know.












Write two sentences using as many of these words as you can. (Entry 2 upwards)







Use coloured pencils to circle the matching words. (Milestone 8 – Entry 1)













How many compound words can you make? Tip: the larger the word the more times you may be able to use it. (Entry 3 upwards) Answers at the bottom.

Which of these words and phrases would you be most likely to use in a formal letter? (Levels 1 and 2)










Now admittedly, you might be thinking that any of these could just as easily be created in a standard word processor. Well yes, they could, but if you have access to a data projector in your class room and have the text file ready to paste into Wordle you can create instant ‘exercises’ for your students. It adds a little pizzazz to the lesson and can prompt students to use Wordle for themselves – they could make up their own word games, devise lists of synonyms or difficult spellings, or perhaps even analyse their writing for word repetition.

Answers

This is the list of compound words I used for the resource above but there may well be other possible answers.