20 Ideas for using WORLD CLOUDS

I love using word clouds in the classroom. If you've never heard of them take a look at mine below, and check out these free sites Wordle and Tagxedo. You can create them to show kids, or have students create their own word clouds. Whatever you choose, here is a list of ideas on how you ro your students can use word clouds:

1.Introduce a new topic

2.Introduce new vocabulary

3.Visual Prompt, create sentences/stories from words

4.Practice oral reports (reading words vs reading report word for word)

5.Copy/paste news article, tweets, - have kids try to figure out what's going on from words

6.Include names of people/events- have kids guess the time period or historical event

7.Have kids create one to summarize/describe a person, place, time period, event

8.Encouraging creative writing from words (character, setting, mood descriptors)

9.Focus on one word- synonyms, antonyms, rhyming, alliteration, related words

10.Teach prepositions Table, Door, Book, Bed, Pillow, Boy (nouns in word cloud)- have the kids make sentences; The bed is by the door. The book is under the pillow. Great for ELL students!

11.Matching Spanish and English (kids find the pairs)

12.Do all of the above with different languages

13.Use Active Expressions handhelds to collate student responses to questions

14.Personal Narratives Copy/Paste for 'Guess Who' game.

15.All About Me words

16.Copy/Paste text from famous speeches, what are the important words/topics

17.Pre-freading- Paste non-fiction words related to book topic, have kids guess a title

18.Copy/Paste two fairy tales, two word clouds-try to guess what they are or the theme

19.Character Traits analysis for book characters or people from history

20.Word Wall online