WORDLES

By Aaron Rogers and Eric Lind

WHAT IS A WORDLE?

A wordle is basically a word cloud.  A word cloud is a picture that happens to have many words inside of it that give the reader a sense of what kind of words they could find for a given topic.  For example, in a wordle about the Rocky Mountains the words: Snow, Peaks, Gold, Rivers, Bears, Granite, Cold, Windy, Pines, and etc.  could be used in it.  A wordle can be formulated to take any shape that the creator would want.  Some wordles are created to be in just basic boxes.  Others are made to be more creative and take the shapes of arrows, triangles, stars, and other shapes that might help get the main points across.

WORDLES IN THE CLASSROOM

Wordles have a variety of uses in the classroom.  Most of the time, wordles are used to show students what kind of vocabulary words to include in their papers or to be used to help students review or preview a lesson.  Here are some examples of what a wordle can be used for...

• REVIEW: Teachers can use wordles at the beginning of class or at the end of class to review what the students should have learned.  If the teacher choses to use a wordle at the beginning of class, he/she can use a power point (or use handouts) to display the wordle which contains key words from the previous class periods lesson.  Once the wordle is in place, the teacher can show the kids the wordle and ask the students to take out a piece of paper and chose several of the words.  After choosing the words, the students have to define the words and use them in a sentence.  After that, they can be called on.  This same idea can be used at the end of a class where students have to know the vocabulary words that they saw during that class.  ENGLISH: In an English class, a wordle can be used to review the previous chapter of a play or a novel that is being read.  For example, in a chapter from Grapes of Wrath the teacher can take a passage or a page from a chapter and turn it into a wordle.  This can be used in a review to see if the students remember the mainpoint of the previous chapter.  The students who read will not have to rely as much on the wordle; however, the students who didn't read or had trouble grasping the concents of the wordle will be forced to use it more. SCIENCE: For a science class, a teacher can use a wordle to review what happened during an experiment during the wrapup.  Words from the wrap up, such as conclusion or summary, can be mixed in with descriptive words of what students should have seen in the experiment.   

• SCAFFOLDING: Wordles can be used as scaffolding to help students who struggle with writing or coming up with strong words to use on papers.  When students are given a essay to write or are expected to do a great deal of writing, the teacher can create a wordle that would be shown in front of the class which would feature vocabulary words that would help make a strong paper.  In addition, the teacher could ask the class to include 5-7 words from the wordle in their essays. FOREIGN LANGUAGE: In a foriegn language class, such as French, the teacher can use a wordle to scaffold a writing activity about interactions in a restaruant.  Both English and French words can be put into a wordle and hopefully this can spur some critical thinking from the students.  This can also help them find false cognates which would really help struggling learners. 

• ANALYZING TEXTS: Wordles can be used to show the words used in a chapter in a textbook.  A history teacher (for example) can copy and paste a chapter from a novel or a textbook into a wordle generator and have a wordle that shows all the words in a random format.  This forces students to scan the wordle to find key words.  For example, in a chapter that talks about the Civil War, students would see words like:  to, the, death, President, South, Gettysburg, weapons, slavery, from, it, a, General.  Even though there are words like "it" that would not help students at in the wordle, they still have anaylze the wordle to find what the key terms will be.  This can help students in ESL programs preview what they'll be reading.  

• PICTURES: Wordles don't have to be just words.  Pictures can be tied into them so students can get a visual idea of the topic they are studying.  In a geography classroom studying the effects of hurricane Katrina, the teacher can make a word wordle using words like "levy" and "New Orleans" and have pictures of the Superdome and the streams all flooded out to help students see what is going on.  A mosaic of pictures is another way to picture a wordle, only a wordle is a mosaic of words. MATH:  Teachers can use picture/word wordles to help students visualize concepts in math. For a lesson on angles, a teacher can put degrees, names of angles, and pictures of things in an urban setting that display said angles to help students get a grasp of the concepts.

• STUDENTS CREATE THEIR OWN: Students can be given a task of creating one giant wordle at the front of the room.  With a whiteboard or chalkboard, students are told to find important key terms from a reading.  This can be in a novel or a textbook (or even a movie/film clip).  They write down words that they feel are important and then the go to the board and write down their word.  If there are duplicates, its totally fine.  Students are encouraged to write in different sizes and in different colors.  At the end of the activity, students can see what the main concepts of the reading or movie were.  Then a follow up reading assessment can be used.

EXAMPLES OF WORDLES:

This picture was found on this website: http://bizclarity.com/2009/08/29/wordles/  It covers the lyrics of Rolling Stones song.

This picture was found at this website: http://bizclarity.com/2009/08/29/wordles/  This wordle covers the Gettysburg Address.

LINKS TO MORE WEBSITES THAT COVER WORDLES

• http://milesberry.net/2009/01/informal-learning-wordles/  This website gives examples of informal wordles and how to use them in the classroom.
• http://teachersites.schoolworld.com/webpages/KRandall1/news.cfm?subpage=1135528  This website is made to help teachers understand what wordles are.
• http://www.wordle.net/create  This website will help teachers create their own wordles.
• http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/history/comments/wordle/  This website gives more examples of what wordles look at and some of their uses in the classroom
• http://cruncht.com/wordpress/plugin/wordpress-wordle/  This is another website that helps teachers generate their own wordles. 
• http://bizclarity.com/2009/08/29/wordles/ This is probably the best website of all of these.  This not only shows teachers what wordles look like, but how to use them and make them.