Tagxedo: It All Boils Down to This!

Tagxedo is the most wonderful tool I've discovered from reading blogs this summer!!  If you love Wordle, you'll like Tagxedo even more.  It has more options for changing your word cloud. The one I've posted below is made from the entire text of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Then there are options for how many of the most frequently used words to include in the word cloud, up to 600.  The easiest use of this program is to make a cool piece of art, or a gift, but also to explore main idea/characters/themes in a text.  It is so easy!!  You can simply paste text in, or give the site the URL of a blog, website, twitter account, or delicious tags,  and it will find the text itself.  Cool, right?  The possibilities are endless.  You can change the colors, shape, design, orientation, font, etc, etc.

Here's a great resource for 101 ways to use Tagxedo.

How will YOU use Tagxedo in the classroom?

Action Plan for Next Year

I decided to write down some goals to focus my "summer surfing."  I keep getting stuck on websites and searches for cute stuff that I probably will not ever have time to implement, so instead I need some goals to focus my summer time web surfing down time. Here are the major things I want to focus on/implement next year:

1.  Follow my Balanced Literacy first 20 days lessons.

2. Implement a short procedural lesson EVERY day (sort of Ron Clark's Essential 55 style)

3. Design most instruction around projects (PBL).

4. Do NOT assign anything that I don't plan to look at, grade or use to guide further instruction (NO busywork, or 'practice' just for the sake of 'practice').  I want to do MOST of my grading authentically, standing behind the child, during class.  I am the world's worst at grading papers.  I get these HUGE stacks of papers that I don't have time to really spend grading.  NO MORE!!  PBL should help with this.

 5. Return to individualized spelling and include individualized grammar and writing instruction.  I strayed from this last year because I thought it would be easier, but I'm going back!!

Some links I came across. . .
Four Blocks: Writing
Individualized Spelling Lists

Check out some other teacher's goals at this linky party:




What are your goals for next year?