Using Wordle With Your Students

Each week, my students are engaged in weekly technology projects.  These projects are extensions of our weekly basal stories.  My system uses Scott Foresman Reading Street.  Since I teach 4th grade, this project was based on Because of Winn Dixie.  However, you can easily adapt it to any subject area, grade level, or basal story.

I use Edmodo to post my projects to my students.  Edmodo is a safe, social media platform (much like Facebook), but it is only accessible by you, your students, and their parents.  There is no other contact to your students, unless you allow that by setting up different groups.  The weekly projects are posted each week on Edmodo, so students have a central location for all their instructions, links, etc.  They can even access it from home, if they choose to work on their project there.

The first project we did this year was Wordle.  Wordle is a word cloud generator.  It is very simple to use, so it makes a great first project.  Each of my students have their own jump drive.  In fact, it was listed on their supply list.  Here is the project posting that was on Edmodo:

We are going to be reading the section of the story where Ms. Franny meets the brown bear. In this assignment, we are going to learn more about brown bears.

1)Research brown bears on the Internet using Safe Search for Kids.
2)Make a list of at least 25 words that describe brown bears.
3)Create a Wordle using the words you wrote on your list.
a. Click CREATE YOUR OWN
b. Type your words in the PASTE IN A BUNCH OF TEXT box.
c. Click GO.
d. You can change the font, color, etc.
e. Once you are finished, you need to save your Wordle to your jump drive.
1. Click PRINT
2. Change the name of the printer to MICROSOFT OFFICE DOCUMENT IMAGE WRITER.
3. Plug your jump drive in.
4. Change the SAVE AS to REMOVABLE DISK E.
5. Click SAVE.

Show Less

• 

  Safe Search for Kids
  

  safesearchkids.com
• 

  Wordle
  

  wordle.net

Be sure and watch this post for examples of the Wordles that my students created.  They had a lot of fun making them!

~Cara