Wordle with Danielle Booker, Amy Eberle and Tamara West

What In the Wordle Is a Wordle?

A Wordle is a creative device used to display text in an appealing way.The application determines the size of a given word based on the frequency of its use. The more a word is used, the bigger it will be! The words will be displayed in what is called a word cloud, where different colors, shapes, and fonts can be manipulated until the desired visual is achieved.

How to Use a Wordle

To create a word cloud of your own,  

Wordle Throughout the Ages

For Kindergarten:

Though in kindergarten the students cannot read the words used in the wordle, they can use the size of the words to use as clues to figure out a message.

Introduced By: Tamara West

Lesson Title: How do We Feel on Our First Day of Kindergarten?

Grade: Kindergarten  

Objectives: Students will explore their feelings on the first day of kindergarten. Do they feel happy, worried, confused, scared, etc. They will share with the class their feelings and the teacher will record them. Standards: Colorado State Standards Reading, Writing, and Communication Standard 1.a Students can express words and word meanings as encountered in books and conversations. Standard 1.c Students can use new vocabulary that is directly taught though reading, speaking, and listening.  

Preparations: Have a dry erase marker and white board ready to write down their various feelings. Have the class sit in a circle on the floor. Have paper and crayons available for the students to complete their pictures.  

Instruction: Discuss with the students how we all have different feelings about being in kindergarten. Tell them we have words that describe how we feel. We may feel happy, sad, confused, angry, scared, etc.  Activities: Have the students take a few moments to think about what they are feeling that day, their first day of kindergarten. Go around in the circle and have each student share their feelings with the class. As the students share their thoughts write them down on the white board. Once this is done have the students return to their seats where they will illustrate a picture of themselves and how they are feeling.  

Conclusion: Display their artwork in the classroom. Create a word cloud of their descriptive words using wordle. Display their pictures in a circle with the wordle in the middle.

For Third Grade:

Introduced By: Amy Eberle

Lesson Title: Building Community with Adjectives  

Grade: 3rd grade

Objectives: Students will obtain a deeper understanding of what an adjective is by describing their peers. Students will also develop a deeper sense of community through this project.

Standards: Reading, Writing, and Communicating standard 2.3—Increasing word understanding, word use, and word relationships increases vocabulary. Evidence outcome D- Students can categorize words (by function, descriptive characteristics or features, definition)

Preparations:

-Before this lesson, for a quick morning meeting have students describe their neighbor using three positive adjectives.

-Prepare one piece of paper for each student in the class, with their first and last name.

-Get 8 clipboards.

-Print off an extensive list of adjectives.

Introduction: 

- In stations during reading, ask each small group of students what an adjective is and why we use them in writing. Students should reply with something along the lines that adjectives are describing words.

- If students are stumped, remind them of uses in our class Mad Libs. Adjectives are used to describe nouns.

Discussion:

-Ask students to think back to the morning meeting, when they described their neighbor using at least three adjectives. What are some adjectives that you used?

Activities:

- Show the small group one clipboard with a student’s name on it. Ex: Bob Smith.

-Each of you will receive one clipboard with a name on it. Your task will be to describe that person. I would like to see at least 2 new adjectives each time you receive a clipboard. If there are no new adjectives you can possibly think of, please make tally marks next to the words you agree with. One rule is that the words you use should be positive. You, too, will have a clipboard going around and will see the words at the end. Please only use words that you believe are true, and words that you wouldn’t mind saying to this person’s face.

-When you receive your own clipboard, please flip it over and write your favorite color.

-Give each student about 2 minutes per clipboard, and then pass it to the person on your right.

-Time to use Wordle: When all clipboards have been filled (all students are described), type each sheet onto Wordle. For each tally mark, I will type in the adjective again. The student’s name will be the biggest word on the page, followed by the assortment of adjectives.

Conclusion:

The students will receive their word clouds at the end of the project, and see the kind things their peers have to say about them!

(Example of a generic, adjective-filled Wordle)

For Fifth Grade:

Using the Wordle for fifth grade can be easy! Here is a lesson plan about how to use a wordle with your secondary elementary grades.

Introduced BY: Danielle Booker

Lesson Title: Character Trait and Behavior    

Grade:5th grade  

Objectives: Students will understand the reading skill of recognizing characters traits verses their behaviors. Standards:

Introduction:   

-To get students ingaged in this topic students will be asked to think about the following questions: Why do you like your friends? What do they do to make you like them? How would you describe a friend?

- Using a novel (class/teacher choice) students should choose a character to focus on throughout this lesson. Make sure you are using one book for the whole class or several small groups with the same book. This way there will be more than one student able to discuss the book and its characters.

Discussion:

  -Using the novel that students chose have them discuss with partners or in small group characters from the books. Have them discuss character traits and what behaviors prove that the character poseses these traits. -As the teacher make sure that students understand the difference between  character trait and behavior by having short student conferences individually or in small groups.

Activities: -Have students fill out a graphic organizer where the name of the character in focus is in the middle and single word traits are in the surrounding spaces. -Time to wordle: Using the characters and their traits, enter the words into wordle.Some students will have put the same traits down for a character but enter all of the duplicates as well.  Students will then have created a character trait wordle ( or word cloud) where they can see that a trait is a one word way to discribe someone and how people may have many traits.  

Connection: -Students will have created a wordle where a characters most prominate trait, or the trait that most students put on their graphic organizer is the largest and all other traits are surrounding it. This is a fun way for students to visually picture a reading theme. You can then post these around the room to help students better understand their novels and the characters in them.

Additional Information

http://www.wordle.net

The actual web-page used to create a word cloud.

http://www.slideshare.net/JenniferW/wordle-ideas

This link is a video powerpoint production that shares ideas for further use of a Wordle in your classroom.

https://www.chhsmediacenter.com/uploads/1/3/3/2/1332581/how_to_use_wordle.pdf

Here is a link to a more detailed description on how to create a Wordle, and how to use Wordle Advanced.

http://peterpappas.blogs.com/copy_paste/2009/01/build-literacy-skills-with-wordle.html

A blog written by an experienced teacher about how to integrate Wordle into literacy.

http://www.wordle.net/faq

Other questions about using Wordle? The site has conveniently provided a link of Frequently Asked Questions.