Word Cloud Choices

Word Cloud from ABCya!

Today I wanted to share a few sites that our 1st-3rd grade students use to create word clouds.

First, let's look at Wordle. Wordle describes their site as "a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The cloudsgive 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 yoursto use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

Wordle allows you to keep phrases of words together by using a tilda between the two words you don't want separated (~). This is helpful to know before using this tool with your students. Wordle also lets you choose various fonts and color schemes as well as orientation of your words.

Jen Wagner has a great site called Guess the Wordle that is great to use with students on a daily basis.

Here is a description of this site:

"Every day (Monday – Friday) a new wordle will be posted for you and your students to view.
Each wordle will have a TOPIC and you will need to use your diciphering skills to figure out exactly what that topic is. (feel free to use the tools of the internet to figure out the topics)
Monday & Wednesday Wordles
Monday’s Wordle will be easy. All the words will have ONE thing in common.
Wednesday’s Wordle will be a bit more complex. All the words will have TWO things in common.
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday Wordles
Tuesday’s Wordle will be the date of a famous event in world history.
Thursday’s Wordle will be the title of a book, poem, song, fable, etc.
Friday’s Wordle will be a famous location."


Another great site for word clouds is from ABCya! This is a little more user friendly for younger students than Wordle. This site also allows changing the font, orientation of words, and color scheme. One different I really like about ABCya! is that you can save your word cloud as a jpeg to post on a blog or wiki site with one click!


Check out these 2 sites and let your imagination go wild! I think your students will love it. I know ours have enjoyed using this great tool!