Word Clouds

Word Clouds are not a new technology, but I think they have great potential for supporting student learning.  Word clouds provide a quick and easy way to summarize and are visually appealing.

In our building, word clouds are used as an about-me student project.  Teachers also have students enter their essays into a word cloud generator to help them find overused words.

Here are a few more ways that word clouds can be used in the classroom:

• Put text related to the day's lesson into a Word Cloud and have students answer the following questions:

What do you think the lesson is about?

What do you think is the main idea?

What are five questions that you have?

What do you think the title of the article might be?

• Create a word cloud of a current event.  Have students write a paragraph about what the event might be and why they think that.
• Create two word clouds from two different sources on the same topic.  Display them side to side. Have students write a compare/contrast paragraph explaining why they think things are the same and different.  Can be used with political parties, campaigns, speeches, primary documents, etc.
• Have students keep a journal of the foods they eat in a week. Then have them enter their list of foods into a food cloud generator.
• Before starting a new unit, a word cloud can be displayed as students identify and discuss both familiar and unfamiliar words related to a particular concept.  Students can also create their own word cloud during the unit as a review for previously taught content. After a the unit, students can create a word cloud as a class by brainstorming words that describe what was learned.
• Create a word cloud from parts of a novel chapter. (You can find PDFs of many novels online.) Ask students to:

Find three words that relate to: character traits, setting, theme, mood..

Predict what the book is going to be about.

Write a story using 10 or more words from the word cloud

Write a paragraph about their life using 10 words from the word cloud.

Have students write Haikus or other short poems using at least five words from the word cloud.

• Have students collaboratively create word clouds (using Answer Garden, Poll Everywhere, or Google Docs)

Define characteristics: What does it mean to be an American? An atom? A planet? An earthquake? A mammal? An ecosystem? A prime number? A noun?

Vocabulary: When introducing a topic or for review, ask students for all the vocabulary they can think of associated with the work they are studying.  Repeat the activity at the end of the unit and compare.

Summarizing: Have students enter key ideas from a reading from an assigned (homework) text or video.

Choose a topic. Have students enter words related to the topic. Can be used with description of character in a story, adjectives to describe a painting, poem, song...

After group discussions, have each group enter key points/words from their discussion.

As an Exit Ticket, students enter key ideas from the day’s lesson. Use as next day’s Bell Ringer.  Have students write a summary of the lesson using at least 10 words from the Word Cloud.

I would love to hear how other teachers are using word clouds in the classroom.