One Word Project

First, you are going to provide students with an opportunity to reflect upon the previous school year.  The following questions are a great starting place:

Think about your experiences in ____ grade.

What is one word you would use to describe your ____ grade year? WHY?

What went well for you in ____ grade?

What could have gone better?

You can have students pre-write using Google Drive or on paper.  

Show students the video that discusses how to find their words.  Once students watch the video, give them another opportunity to free write (using Google Drive or paper) about some of the following questions:

What do I need?

What do I want?

What gets in my way?

What do I need to focus on?

What do I want to do this year that I haven’t done before?

What do I want to do better this year?

Once students have had an opportunity to write, give them a chance to talk over their writings with their classmates.  Ask them to begin brainstorming possibilities for their perfect words.

After students have had an opportunity to discuss possible choices for their words, have them conduct a little research about their words.  Using tools like visuwords.com and thesaurus.com, students can look into potential words more closely and find words that are the perfect fit.

For example, a student may want to choose "nice" as his word, but after looking at the websites may realize that "cordial" is the perfect fit.  Another student may be considering "try" as her word, but finds that "strive" is the right word for her.

Now that students have found that perfect word that is going to push them to achieve more this year, it's time for them to explain the significance of their chosen words.  Using Google Drive, students should write a paragraph with the following information:

Word

Definition - What does it mean to you (not Mr. Webster)?

How will this word affect you both inside and outside of school?

Students should submit this assignment using Google Classroom.

Now that all students have submitted their words, it's time to make a class word cloud.  Use Wordle to create a word cloud using all of the words students have selected.  Print the word cloud and display it prominently in your classroom.