One of the great things about being the ISTE 10 Newbie is that I am meeting great people and learning new things almost daily.  Recently Beth Still blogged about a book called Guess the Wordle and introduced me to the one of the authors – Jen Wagner.  As a result I purchased the book and spent some time dwelling on Wordles and how I can apply them to my 8th grade Social Studies Class.

Jen’s awesome book got me thinking of several different ways that I can utilize this free service in my classroom.

Some ideas:

1.  Review for a vocabulary quiz:  Make a Wordle from the definition and have students guess the term.  Students should also explain how they came up with their answer

2.  End of year review:  Create a Wordle from a set of terms related to a particular unit and have students identify the unit.   Again I think that having students explain their answers – even though they might be wrong is where the true learning comes into play.

3.  Class Starter:  I have a Promethean ActivBoard in my room and every day I give the kids something to do upon entering the classroom.  I could put up a Wordle that relates to the theme of the day and have my students write down their guess and an explanation.

What are some of the ways that you use Wordles in your classroom?

Jen has made the generous offer to give 10% of the sales from this book to the ISTE 10 Newbie Project. Thank you, Jen!