TOOLS REVIEW: WORDLE

WHAT IS IT?

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 the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Go to wordle.net and click on "cerate your own"

Write down the new vocabulary and sentences and click on "submit"

Then, you can either choose to "randomize" (bottom right) or choose the font type, colour, etc. (top left).

Once finished, click on "safe to public gallery"

HERE YOU HAVE an example of wordcloud: http://www.wordle.net/delete?index=5309896&d=VWFY

SUGGESTIONS:

I would use this tool either as a pre-treatment activity, writing a brief summary of the story and trying that the students guess what the story is about, or as a post-treatment activity in which students review the vocabulary learnt while reading; After the students create their word cloud with the new-learnt vocabulary, they will have to either define them or to look for a synonym.