Words, Words, Words!!

Wordle.net






About it:

• A site which allows you to insert text or random words and with a click on the "Go" button a beautiful assortment of the text inserted will be available. 
• It is free!
• When a text is inserted the most frequent words appear in a larger font.
• You could choose different fonts and colors to make the wordle more attractive and catchy!

Significance:

• A great tool that promotes group work and collaboration.
• A great tool for students to play around in their free time (Learners Autonomy) to develop their vocabulary repertoire.
• Great for developing students vocabulary by learning about word collocations. 
• A great motivation tool which is also fun and attractive.
• Since it promotes collaboration it also leads to negotiation. Students when working in pairs/groups get the chance to discuss and reflect their opinions and their way of thinking.
• It definitely would improve their spelling skills if specific exercises were given.
• Great for all levels..depending on the type of activities that the teacher exploits. 

 Suggestions:


In Classroom:

• It could be used in so many different ways in the classroom whether the students were asked to work individually, in pairs or groups. However, i believe that working in pairs and groups would be more fun.
• It could be used as a warm up to introduce the students to the lesson intended to be given.
• One activity could be to ask students to try to link the words that the teacher had already prepared and try to guess what the topic is going to be about. 
• Another activity would be to ask students to form compound words from the words present, its a great review to compound words they have been learning before in class.
• An activity that i am very eager to try in the future is to insert lyrics and get them in to a wordle and pass a sheet to groups or pairs and ask the students to try to figure out what the song is (i believe it would be great with teenagers, because i recall entering class and finding lyrics all over the board). This would be a fun and a motivating activity with great benefit to get out of it.
• Another activity that i think would work really great with beginners, intermediate and advanced students would be story-telling!! Teachers would choose text that suits each level, insert it to wordle and pass out different stories to each group. Students would have to read the words and try to retell the story, or a story that they invent. A great activity for arousing the students creativity, plus a great speaking activity. 
• One of the activities that i really thought was helpful, is to type in certain words in wordle and print out the sheet and ask the students to draw what each word means, or if it was an activity to do with shapes and colors, students would have to color the word color etc. (Great for beginners).
• A great way of involving students in reflecting over their own writing. Teachers could insert student's essay on to wordle, pass them out and ask the students to examine which words are frequently used and what other words can they use instead.
• A grammar activity using wordle would be to type in sentences according to the grammar subject that is being taught in the lesson, or even a review of a previous lesson. Students would be asked to put the words in the correct order. To make it even more demanding, the teacher could ask the students after sorting out the sentences to change the tense of the sentences, let's say from the past tense to present perfect. 

Outside Classroom:

• I guess it's a great tool for students to play around with in their free time.
• Students could use to it to write secret letters to their peers and exchange them in class and the other students would have to try to guess what the letter is about (Quite fun with teenagers..they can get quite blunt)!
• Students can develop their writing skills and reflect regularly on their progress by inserting their text in to wordle and find out the kind of words their using.
• Students could be motivated to try wordle and practice their vocabulary...students could be asked to provide the input and present it to the class as a quiz where they would have to guess a story, poem, riddle etc. Teachers could give students extra marks for trying! (Motivation!)

Shortcomings:

• I believe that it might become boring sometimes if it overused and the same kind of activities are repeated over and over.