Playing with Words

Hello again.  This week's activity is displaying words with different web sites.

Word Clouds

Word clouds are a tools to assess your students' understanding on a topic or reading.  According to the article from Teaching Tactics, Scott Hamm states students can use word clouds to reflect on the reading and organize their thoughts. With the revision of the TEKS and CCRS, rigor and higher order thinking is stressed.  

I liked that the student can type in their own thoughts and see them in a different way.  I preferred using Tagxedo and Tagul because there were a variety of  font style and color options.  I also liked that you could save, share and print the image.  I felt Wordle was limited on the font color.  When I was trying to save the image I could only embed or print the image out. I didn't like that. 

Quipio & ReciteThis

These two sites are so cool! I love creating these images! It was simple and fast. My students would love to create these images.



As a STAAR EOC teacher, I am constantly looking for new ways for students to understand a topic.  I would use any of these websites to enhance their understanding.  In my district we have a TLI Grant (Texas Literacy Initiative) and one of the objectives is to increase understanding of text or stories. The TLI specialist gave me a short story of small poxes and Word Clouds would be an excellent way of showing student understanding.  In Tagxedo, they could type in key terms or write a summary about the reading. Once they are finished, they could email me the image.