Word Clouds

I have found the use of word clouds to be a powerful tool for my students who struggle to find meaning from a text. It is a great visual strategy that combines art with vocabulary. I find it really pulls my students in and gets them excited with what we are doing.

What is a Word Cloud? 

Well a word cloud is a visual way of organizing text into a picture. The bigger the word the more frequently it was used in the text. This makes common ideas or themes from a text easy to spot for older students. Here is how I have used them:

All about Me Poems: 

I have students think of their own describers for themselves and then have the students put it in a word cloud.

Making Predictions:

Here is one I created for Goldilocks and the Three Bears to show elementary students before reading the story to make predictions about what it might be about.

Here is one from  a news article to help with prediction:

Teaching Vocabulary:

Here is one with Earth Day vocabulary that I will have my students look at and then we can discuss the words they know and those they want to know.

Comparing/Contrasting:

Compare two characters from a book. Have students look up character traits and describe characters. Share with the group to compare and contrast. These examples are of Percy Jackson and his friend Annabeth. 

Summarizing: 

 I have students use these to create a quick summary of the text they read by copying the text from their ipad into a word cloud app, then have them describe the key points they notice. The bigger words are the most frequently used.

Inferencing:  

Make an inference game with common describer words. Have students guess the animal or object.

Here are some other helpful resources:

http://www.teachthought.com/literacy-2/19-interesting-ways-to-use-word-clouds-for-learning/

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/reading-teaching-strategy

http://edutech4teachers.edublogs.org/files/2012/10/Edutopia-Top-10-Tips-for-New-Media-color-ugzygq.pdf