Hi again! I have just started experimenting with Wordle, and so far I love it! (http://www.wordle.net) This unique website allows students to input words and phrases relevant to a topic. The website then jumbles the words around into a work of art! For someone like me, who loves art and to be artsy, but has no artistic talent whatsoever, this makes me feel like I accomplished something of value. The website is fairly easy to use. I did have to get used to typing in phrases or names without using spaces, or else the words will be split apart. Another thing I noticed was to be careful when spelling words, as once you jumble the words, you can't go back to correct misspelled words.
For kids, this is a great way to introduce adjectives, character traits, and poetry. Each wordle creation is a piece of art in itself. In my classroom, I used Wordle to create a piece on Martin Luther King, Jr. using words and phrases that my students and I discussed. I hung the poem on a bulletin board, surrounded by our "We Have A Dream..." stories. This was my way of introducing Wordle to my students. I plan on having each of my students create their own piece of art using character traits and adjectives to describe Abraham Lincoln or George Washington for our Preident's Day bulletin board. I think this will be a great way to get kids excitied about writing and taking ownership of their ideas. I'm excited to see how it goes! (Here is a link to my Martin Luther King Jr. word art. http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1565543/Martin_Luther_King )
One drawback I do foresee is that although these word poems look great in color, our school/administration restricts the use of color printing to a small handful of items. I've decided to print the word poems out in black and white, and then have the students color and decorate their own using crayons, colored pencils, or markers. The other thing that may be an issue for my students is spelling. This is a lacking skill for many of my students. I think the best way for my class to offset this is to first write all the words either by hand or in a Word document to check for spelling mistakes.
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I like your wordle! I plan on using it for adjectives too!
ReplyDeleteI was able to go back and change words and/or fix spellings. If your browser doesn't do that, you can highlight all your text before submitting and copy it. That way if you go back, you can just paste it.
Also, you can make hyperlinks in your blog post by clicking on the little picture of earth with a paperclip, then entering your url there. That way viewers can click on it instead of copying and pasting it.
I really like your wordle. I think this would also be neat to use with my students when creating poetry for their writing portfolios. I like the idea of allowing the students to color the wordle after it's printed in order to save color ink.
ReplyDelete-Jennifer Nappier