Saturday, March 19, 2022

Saturday Morning Clouds

The last thing I wanted to do on a Saturday morning was a 3 and 1/2 hour professional learning session, but there I was in front of my lap top at 9 AM, joining a Zoom call. At first, there were only 3 other participants, and I sighed as I considered all the extra participation that might be necessary with such a small cadre of fellow learners. 

As it was, the group only expanded to 8, but I was glad to see a name I recognized; a former student teacher I had worked with was on the call, too. We texted back and forth a bit as the session went on (the virtual equivalent of passing notes), evaluating the activities and gossiping about the guy who left the breakout room when we suggested that he be our spokesperson. 

The time went by as quickly as a workshop on Saturday morning can, and I came away with a few new additions to my teaching tool box. One of them, WordSift.org, creates word clouds of text so that teachers can actually see the most prevalent terms in an article or passage and then front-load or scaffold them for English language learners. The site also suggests images and other resource that instructors can use to help with teaching the vocabulary.

I love anything with a word cloud! I texted to my friend, and spent the next few minutes copying and pasting entries from my blog. (Don't worry! I was listening, too.)



3 comments:

  1. You've long been a word cloud champion, so I trust this new Wordsift recommendation. Love the image of you finding comfort in a side text chat. It does help!

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  2. Saturday Zoom professional development is always more fun with someone you with which you can pass notes! As painful as giving up your leisurely Sat morn can be, it's always great to take something into Monday morn. I will be checking out wordsift. org.

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  3. Wordsift sounds like a great technique!

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