The use of word clouds in the classroom is a good way to really get through to visual learners. A word cloud is a visual image of collection of words made up of words from various sources such as words that you add yourself, a website, a poem or story etc. The great thing about word clouds is that not only do students love using them, but they are eas and valuable y to use in a variety of content areas and grade levels. My favourite word cloud generator in the past has been Wordle, but today I used Tagxedo in class and the students embraced it with great ease.
How to use Tagxedo
Tagxedo is free and is incredibly easy to use. I have created a SlideShare below to illustrate the steps.
Get your class creating beautiful word clouds using Tagxedo from Schoolnet SA
Using Tagxedo as an icebreaker in the first week of the year
At this time of the year teachers are usually conducting activities relating to getting to know their students and yesterday I did likewise with a Grade 6 class.
- They wrote their names at least ten times to ensure that their names stood out.
- We also used the time to revise grammar while we were about it. ‘Write down three adjectives that best describe you’ etc.
- Finally they chose a shape that best depicts them.
- They reported back on their word clouds to the rest of the class.
Using word clouds in the classroom
The Internet is full of ideas on how teachers have used word clouds in their lessons. Here are a few relevant posts loaded with ideas for all subjects.
Using Word Clouds in the Classroom from Lisa Van Gemert
More ideas can be found at:
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/reading-teaching-strategy
