Word Clouds

I’ve used word clouds in my classroom in the past to generate discussions on theme and plot. After trying all five word cloud generators, I found that WordItOut worked best for me. I simply typed a short paragraph, and the software did all hard work (see below). However, I did like the shapes and emojis available with WordArt.com. I could see myself using this word cloud generator as part of a book share or book club activity wherein middle and high school students could summarize a novel and use a unique word cloud shape to bring the story to life. ABCya would definitely work best with elementary students, while AnswerGarden seems geared to older students, and would simply visually represent student answers to librarian/teacher-posed questions.