Using Wordle for Literacy in the Classroom 

By: Kimberly Moffett

What is Wordle?

Wordle is a program that generates words from a given text into a word cloud. This cloud of words is vocabulary taken right from the text/paragraph/ or link to blog or website. It ignores small words ( and, but, is, the, etc.) and uses the rest for the cloud. The size of the word will be determined by how frequent the word is found in the given text. After the word cloud has been created, you can edit the cloud by choosing different fonts, sizes, and colors. 

The link below will take you to the home page of Wordle. Down below is what the home page looks like. If you want to view other users' creations, click on Gallery and lists of different word clouds will appear. If you are ready to start on you own word cloud click the "CREATE" button at the top. 

http://www.wordle.net

Picture taken from: http://www.wordle.net

The "CREATE" button will take you to the page shown below. Here you will type your text into the space provided where it says "Paste in a bunch of text:" You can also use the other option of copying and pasting a URL from another website's text. Once the text is in the space provided, click GO

Picture taken from: http://www.wordle.net/create

Now your word cloud is created. You do not have to keep the default creation of your cloud. You can personalize it by changing the font, color, layout, and language. 

If you want to change one of these parts go to the top of the page and click on either Font, Layout, Language, or Color. 

The Following example is one I created for my dog. You can see how I am changing the Color scheme by clicking on COLOR and scrolling through the options

Picture taken from: http://www.wordle.net/create  Created by Kimberly Moffett 

Once your word cloud is created, you can view it in a new window and either share it to other links, like Email, Facebook, and Twitter. Or you can print it off. You can also save it to the public gallery, but make sure you are okay with everyone viewing your personal word cloud before you press OK for that. 

Applying Wordle to the classroom: 

1st Example: With Kindergarden or maybe 1st grade students you could work on phonemic awareness using Wordle. You can have a word bank for the students with a list of words, some containing the same sound at the beginning, like "Ch" or "Sh". Tell the students to create a word cloud with ONLY the words that have the "Ch" sound at the beginning. Then, they have to pick out those words from the list and use the tool to create the cloud. Once the cloud is created, the students have a good visual of how certain words are connected. 

2nd Example: Have students choose what their favorite animal is. Tell the students they have to list 10 or more adjectives to describe that animal. This is a great way for kids to work with their Nouns and Adjectives. NOTE: have the students write the name of the animal 2 or 3 times before their adjectives. This will ensure that the animal is the largest word. 

This is an example of the animal activity:

Picture taken from: http://www.wordle.net/create Created by Kimberly Moffett 

3rd Example: From a story read in class, you can do a cause and effect lesson. Choose a cause from the story and have that as the main word in the cloud ( you can do this by typing that word more than one time) Then have the students write a list of the effects of that cause and the generate the cloud. 

Here is an example of the cause and effect cloud:

Picture taken from: http://www.wordle.net/create created by Kimberly Moffett 

How other teachers are using Wordle:

1. http://www.slideshare.net/katygal/19-interesting-ways-to-use-wordle-elementary Here is a link to 19 different ways to use this tool in the classroom! 

2. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/new-teacher-boot-camp-wordle-lisa-dabbs This site has some great ideas to add this tool to creative writing and bigger projects. 

3. http://blog.wordle.net/2009/08/how-to-make-wordle-safe-for-classroom.html This blog discusses how to make Wordle safe for students to use 

4. http://www.mangomon.com/what-in-the-word-wordle-in-the-classroom/ This site gives some ideas for activities for students with special needs 

5. http://www.thinkfinity.org/thread/3089 A teachers success story of using Wordle