On a whim, I pasted the first paragraph of a story (A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez) into Wordle.
It would be cool to hand the Wordle out (nothing more, not even the title) to the class before reading have students in groups come up with the following:
- What is the story going to be about?
- Who might the main characters be?
- What will the setting be like?
- What is the tone of the story?
- What words might we need to define?
- What questions do you have about anything so far?
- Whatever else you can think of . . .
The groups should save their predictions and revisit them in journals during and after reading.
I think I will try this idea this fall and see what happens.
10 responses so far ↓
1
Carla Beard
// Jul 29, 2008 at 1:44 pm
This is a GREAT idea!
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2
The English Teacher Blog » Blog Archive » Wordle
// Jul 29, 2008 at 1:46 pm
[...] 7/29/08 — Dawn Hogue offers some ideas for using Wordle as a prereading [...]
3
blogwalker
// Aug 8, 2008 at 10:42 am
Dawn, between you, Carla, and a number of bloggers, I’m finding great classroom applicationideas for Wordle. I was thinking I would add a Wordle page to a wiki I use for my workshops and put all these great tips in one place, unless someone else has already done this. If this is the case, can you point me to a link?
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4
Dawn Hogue
// Aug 8, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Hi Gail,
I don’t know of anything. Maybe Carla does. I also don’t think it’s so bad to replicate something that may already be out there. As with my recent attempt to get teachers to use Edublogs, I know I am simply repeating what you’ve already done so much better. But different people will have access to different resources. I’ll visit your wiki soon.
[Reply]
5
blogwalker
// Aug 8, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Dan Meyer’s recent put down of Wordle prompted my comment, Dawn. Put a technology tool in the hands of great English teacher’s and new possibilities for teaching and learning quickly surface:-)
Gail
[Reply]
6
blogwalker
// Aug 8, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Oops… take out that ‘ in teachers.
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7
Dawn Hogue
// Aug 9, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Well, of course, a technology tool is only as good as what it can do for learning. If we’re only playing with gadgets, we’re not teaching.
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8
Nicole
// Feb 12, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I just ran across this blog entry and wanted to say thanks for the great idea! I’m having fun creating some wordles that I’ll use for pre-reading activities soon!
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9
Dawn
// Feb 16, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Hi Nicole. Wordles are a lot of fun aren’t they? I have students creating them now for covers for novel projects, not at my suggestion, but on their own.
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10
wordle- « Four17
// Feb 25, 2009 at 12:06 pm
[...] Dawn Hogue blogs about Wordle as a prereading strategy. [...]
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