Note to self:

Remember to have students read mentor texts as they are approaching any work on their own comics. One text that would be good to use and accessible online is Sticky Burr by John Lechner. The full book is not online, but he has a Sticky Burr Comic Strip on the FableVision website. The site says that a new page is added to this ongoing comic each week.

So…what if students took a piece of their writing and entered it into Wordle or another Tag Cloud generator? They could see which words they are using the most. They would be able to revise their Word Choice (6Traits of Writing) based on this visual information.

Here’s an example created from a technology presentation:

You can see I might go back and see how I used the word “information”. Since it is the largest in the Wordle, I used it frequently throughout the piece I wrote. In Wordle’s FAQ they suggest they may make a version for education soon. As it stands, they do not censor their gallery – so be aware…

Another use? Place student descriptions of what the “Lab Rules” are into Wordle to see results. Could be a visual reminder.

More great Wordle Ideas:

Google Docs presentation created by Tom Barrett called Thirty-Eight Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom.

I’ve seen many different ways to create comics both in software and online. With the latest “boom” in graphic novels I see many possible connections to curriculum and writing areas for the upcoming year. Books such as Melvin Beederman and Howtoons are good starting points.

Software like Comic Life and web applications such as Pixton and Comiqs make this genre appealing. We purchased Comic Life Magiq this year for the computer lab. Students whom may not take to writing might be motivated by such opportunities. There are a few grade levels who create comic strips by hand to demonstrate a sequence of events (Water Cycle, Bill of Rights). Perhaps this can help some students? Lots of possibilities!

The book below (Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! by Bob Barner) contains a chart in the last pages that could be translated and expanded into a basic chart in Excel or Numbers for a first exposure to these types of documents. This might be a good basis for the start of lessons in the lab, launching points perhaps. On a side note, my 3 year old loves the chart and can’t wait for that part of the book to show us which bugs fly and which do not.