Clouds that help us see.

Hi there!!

I've just discovered a very interesting website: wordle.net. It's an amazing tool that enables you to create "wordclouds" from a text based on word ocurrence from any text. It's really easy and fast to use (and it's free, which adds to the lot ;D ). 

There are lots of activities you can arrange for your students with the help of these word clouds. You can, for example,paste in short texts that your students have studied recently. Show them the word cloud and see if they can remember what the text was about and how the words were used within the text. You can build up a bank of word clouds over a semester and pull them out at random to get students to recall the texts they have studied and the key vocabulary in them. You could also see if they could rewrite or reconstruct the text based on the word cloud.

I've just tried this tool. I chose a text based on "The little red hen" (a story I'm currently reading with my first primary kids) and this is what came out. You will have to cut and past the link below to take a look.

I hope you find it useful, I certainly did.

Enjoy!!

<a href="http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/6715078/The_little_red_hen." 
          title="Wordle: The little red hen."><img
          src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/6715078/The_little_red_hen."
          alt="Wordle: The little red hen."
          style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd"></a>