A Wordle Wall

I was reading an article from Buzzfeed recently titled 19 Word Walls That Will Blow Your Mind. I came across this one...

I love word walls - when used properly they can be very beneficial to student learning. A word wall should not be a static fixture in your classroom - but an ever-changing and emerging display... I am a firm believer in adding content to my wall after I have taught it for children to continue referencing as the year goes on. I saw the word wall pictured above and it really got these wheels turning... trying to figure out how I could bring that into my classroom of second graders...

Here is what I have come up with...

I used the site wordle.net to create these science word clouds to add to my word wall. 

I started in a word doc - I typed all my vocabulary words in for the topic. The more times you type the word - the larger it will appear once you create your word cloud - so for the matter unit - 

I typed matter in 10 times

solid, liquid, gas ... 5 times....

evaporation, condensation, vapor, mixture, dissolve .... 4 times

(Get the picture?)

You can pick the font, color, distribution... 

I am pretty excited about this!

I am planning on making each content area a different color so the children can easily distinguish science/math/social studies/ela...

I'm off to play with more vocabulary and word clouds!

:) :) :) ;)

Free Civil War apps!

Who likes free? 

Me! Me! :) 

I was doing some research last night... my 5th graders are learning about the Civil War. It has been

 A LONG time 

since I learned about the Civil War. We also happen to live in a state that has some Civil War history - which makes this ten times cooler {for me anyway.... }

I was planning on using Google Earth to zoom into some of the battlefield sites so they could gain some  perspective.... where the battles happened... terrain... proximity to important cities or military outposts...

since we can't actually go and see any of these things IRL...

I started looking through the app store...

there are a heck of a lot of games about the civil war - which might be interesting to play after we have done some research....

But. Then. I. Found. Free. Apps!

Free battlefield apps - 

with maps 

lists of generals and militia

timelines

AND

videos and photographs!

JACKPOT!

These apps are all affiliated with civilwar.org 

This is a Civil War Trust trying to preserve acres of battlefields. 

I went a *little* crazy. Here is a picture of my phone after downloading - oh.... 15 apps or so... 

:D

I was up until at least midnight last night touring Gettysburg. 

Warning - Some of the pictures are graphic - they show dead soldiers on the battlefields, horses, houses that had been attacked... full of primary sources!

{interviews, first hand accounts, pictures}

SO PLEASE - PREVIEW!

Okay - Ready for the bad news? 

They are only on the iPhone right now. 

:(

BUT - if you have a VGA cable - you can hook your iPhone to your projector... and TADA - everyone can see! :) 

There is ONE app for the iPad... I am in the process of downloading and installing now. 

The Gettysburg app had a tour that needed to be downloaded (these are originally meant to be walking tour guides...) 

But I went ahead and downloaded all the information so that I could wander blissfully through the app. 

{DORK}

Okay - so - if you grab these - let me know what you think! So far I am pretty amazed at the quality since it is free.... jus' my two cents. :) 

What other resources do I NEED for teaching Civil War? Anything you use and love? Help a girl out! I've spent most of my teaching career in first and second - so I'm at the edge of my comfort zone here! :) 

OH MAN - 

I almost posted without including links! Whew, so happy I caught that! :) 

YES  - I am missing a few battles... I am working on adding those now! :) 

There is one I would really like - Love Letters from the Civil War - could it be any more romantic! :) 

Maybe another day! ;)

Have a great night!

Tech Tip Tuesday

Let me start by saying....

THIS WILL ONLY WORK ON A MAC....

I tried it on my pc today, and no luck. :(

BUT.

IT.

IS.

Awesome. 

I create all my tpt products in PowerPoint. I started doing this about two years ago. It makes arranging everything SO easy. You can add tables and pictures, clip art and text boxes where ever you want. It doesn't get knocked down to the next page - or worse - disappear. (Maybe it's just me... MS Word and I don't get along). 

So anyway - back to my tip 

While in PowerPoint - usually to arrange my graphics and put my text boxes on top of my headers/borders - I always right click and move forward or backward.

Then right click and move backward again. 

and again. 

and again. 

{Get the picture :)}

BUT - if you right click and choose Reorder Overlapping Objects...

Your page magically spreads out like all those lovely covers in iTunes - and you can flip through them... like in the old days... at the jukebox...

Okay.. I'm back. 

Check this out!

I don't know about you - but it might be one of the most beautiful things I've seen while creating. 

Once your page is all laid out like this - You just grab the layer you want and move it between the other layers - and VOILA! 

No more right clicking 9 times to get your header behind your text and all your graphics. 

I hope you enjoy this and find it as useful as I have. If you have any other techy tips - leave it in the comments! :)