Wordle
In the classroom in which I work, we do a lot of team building activities. In fact we try to implement classroom team building activities at least once into our daily routine. Wordle proved to be an amazing tool to use not only for a classroom team building activity, but also to put a positive spin on keyboard typing. The students in my classroom typically groan about typing, however with this activity they were excited and could not wait to type up their individual wordle's.
For the wordle team building activity, each student should first write their name on a piece of paper. The name sheets should then be circulated around the classroom. Each student should write at least one (more if they want), nice, encouraging words or phrases about the other students on the papers. For assistance, the teachers can write a word bank on the board for the students to look to for ideas to write down. Teachers also should circulate around the room ensuring all name sheets make it around the class of students, teachers also can aid students in thinking of words or statements to write if students feel stumped. The students should also be made aware that they can repeat words or phrases that other students may have already written down on the name paper.
Once all the name sheets have completely circulated around the room, each student should be given their personal name sheet. I have to say that when I did this activity with students in my class, they were all in their glory when they saw all the nice encouraging words and phrases their peers had wrote about them! The next step of the project is to actually have the students create their personal wordle. In order for the students to create their wordle, teachers should log the students onto wordle.net. The students first start by typing in their name. Students should be encouraged to type in their name 8 to 10 times, this will ensure their name appears nice and big on their personal wordle. Students then will start typing in all the words and phrases that peers wrote down about them. When students complete this step, they should be encouraged to play around with their wordle until they are 100% happy with the way it looks. In order to do this, teachers can assist the students in going through the wordle tools. For example, students can change the colors of their wordle, students can change the font style and size, students can also change how the words are arranged on the paper. Again during creation of the wordle, teacher assistance may very well be required. I feel it really all depends on the age, grade, and functioning level of the students. For my class of students, teacher assistance was required, but it had nothing to do with the technology tool itself. Assistance was required to keep the students from straying onto other pages or clicking on things too many times, etc. Once all wordles are completed, teachers can display them around the classroom.
I am very pleased with how well utilizing wordle in my classroom went. It proved to be a very user friendly, fun, engaging technology tool. As I have previously stated, I used Wordle in a second--fourth grade ED/BD classroom for a team building activity, however I can see myself utilizing Wordle in classrooms of all grade levels as well as all ability levels. Wordle is definitely a tool I will be implementing into classroom curriculum. The bottom line is, Wordle is just a really fun tool.
Please see the attachment for a Wordle example.
Please see the attachment for a Wordle example.
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/5967447/J
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