5 M INUTE G URU Kristen Thomas WORDLEWORDLE

W HAT IS W ORDLE ? “Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to your own desktop to use as you wish.”

E XAMPLES

P ROS AND C ONS o Free o Easy to use o Can change the color and font of words o Very quick o No sign up/ no need to make an account o Does not offer Chinese or Japanese characters o Does not filter out “obscene” Wordles from online gallery o Must have the Java plugin installed for the site to work o Can’t alter the word size once its created o Limited options of how to rearrange words

U SE IN THE CLASSROOM Science : Create a food chain representing population of each animal by word size Reading : Create a word wall to hang in the classroom of new vocabulary words students find in literature Writing : Create a word cloud and have students create a story from what they see in the cloud History : Have students make a word cloud of people, places, events, and themes of a certain period of time Math : A word cloud can illustrate units of measurement by making big units in a large font and small units in a smaller font Health : Have students keep a food journal for a week and then enter everything they ate into a word cloud

O THER U SES Header for a blog or website Make a unique card Eye-catching poster Alternative to a word search T-shirt design Make a visual representation of you with words that describe who you are, your likes/dislikes, family, etc.