Working with Wordle!

What's a Wordle?

Wordle is a tech tool which generates a "word cloud" from text that you input.  The more you use a word, the more prominent it appears.  It allows you to alter your word cloud by changing the fonts, layouts, and color schemes.  Since your Wordle is derived from words, it should be obvious that it's use would involve language and literacy.

Wordle's use.

I found Wordle to be an extremely easy tech tool to use, you just type in the content you want and out pops a word cloud.

Wordle in the classroom.

My example of it's use in the classroom consist of taking a story(Just A Little Bit More) from a 1st grade reader and inputting the reading into Wordle.  The story line consisted of repetitive mention of the characters in the story.  I used the word cloud to play a character word find game with the children.  We used the Wordle as a "talking point" (discussion) tool.  (eg. Who do you think is the main character and who is the least significant character?)  I found that this same word cloud could be used to have the children find the verbs (action words) and then write sentences using those verbs.  With the Wordle the teacher has the ability to guide the word search in any direction the content allows and would definitely by beneficial in the classroom.

Just A Little Bit More by Ann Tompert