Here's a fun way to create a word wall with your students. Tagxedo.com is a free online "word cloud" generator. It allows you to create a word cloud from an existing webpage (like I did above with the Berkley RA Blog) or by typing in a series of words. There is a lot of freedom in creating your word cloud (color, shape, theme, font, orientation, etc.). You can even upload your own image to use as the "shape". You can save the image or print a full-sized page.
Here's a little about my first attempt at it!
As an opening activity in Global Health, my students each chose from one of three text sets that would help them to define global health. They did additional research and added their ideas to their text set. Then, students met in expert groups to solidify their understandings. Next, they were grouped into jigsaw groups in which they were the "one expert" sharing out about their text set. Collectively, the jigsaw group created a poster identifying the key issues in global health, discussing why we should study global health, and a 25-word definition of global health. Today they did a gallery walk to share their ideas and we entered the ideas from their posters onto tagxedo.com to get a picture of their current ideas about global health. My plan is to repeat the activity at the end of the year when they re-define global health and have them comment on the changes that they see.
It would be great to share some of your ideas about how to use this fun word wall activity in other ways! Please leave a comment with your thoughts and ideas.
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