Word Clouds in the SCIENCE Classroom

Ways to Use Word Clouds in the Classroom - by Michael Gorman

http://www.wordle.net/
http://www.tagxedo.com/
http://wordsift.com/

Science

1. When classify objects… make a word cloud for each classification. Remember you can make the classification heading bigger.
2. Make word molecules and compounds by putting in the elements by relative numbers of atoms in each compound into a word cloud. Use advanced number feature.
3. Create word clouds for animals in a biome. Remember you can make the classification heading bigger.
4. Create a simple food chain showing representing each population of animal by word size. In fact create a whole food web of an area or biome. Use advanced number feature.
5. Create word clouds to illustrate the elements and all of the uses for each specific element. Each element could be its own word cloud.
6. Have students compare sizes of different planetary objects and make a scalable word cloud of each. Make each planet a different color.
7. Show different climates of different cities showing the scale of city size using average temperature, or rainfall, or snowfall, or your idea.
8. Create a word cloud of different geographical/climate occurrences showing size relationship. Example: Famous Earthquake Magnitudes or places of occurrences.
9. Put both the word and short definitions into a word cloud. Have students find a way to connect the words and definitions. This could be redoing the word cloud with a tilde between words so the go together. It could be color coding the words using the advanced edit feature. Perhaps they just draw lines between them. Could be used to classify items (example: type of rock under its classification) or used as labels to words (Such as label for an element and element).
10. Students create a word cloud of famous scientists or events in science history.
11. Have students make predictions and form a hypothesis. They then shorten them to a phrase and are put into a class word cloud. This allows for a class discussion and students then write their own hypothesis with reasoning and create their own individual word cloud.
12. Have students read a science nonfiction article. Have them create a paragraph or short story using these terms and words in science fiction.  With their story they should then create two word clouds. One of the articles that was science fact and the other science fiction. Can members of the class tell the difference?