url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CC0QFjAC&url=http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/B369-Young-Learners-Activity-Book_v10

TeachingEnglish Young Learners Activity Book
Activities
Activity 48: Wordle prediction
Marija Jovic – Sebia
Age: 8-14
45 minutes Large classes? Yes Mixed level? Yes
Materials: Printed copies of ‘word clouds’.
Organisation: Group work.
Aim: To practise the reading skill of prediction; writing.
Description: http://www.wordle.net is a website that uses keywords from a text of your choice to
generate a ‘word cloud’ (called a ‘wordle’). In this activity the children use the word cloud to
predict the content of a text and to write it, but this is a very flexible tool that can be used for a
number of purposes.
Preparation: Before the lesson, choose the reading text that will be the focus of the lesson. Then
go to http://www.wordle.net and create your word cloud using words from the text. Choose the
most important words from each paragraph (not more than five per paragraph) and copy them
into the Wordle generator. The more times you copy a word, the bigger it will appear on the word
cloud, so copy the most important words in each paragraph a number of times into Wordle. You
will need one copy of the word cloud for each group.
Procedure
1. Divide the children into groups of four and give each group a copy of the word cloud.
Explain that the children will reconstruct the text using the words in the word cloud. Explain
that the biggest words are the most important ones and may be used more than once.
2. The children work together to reconstruct the text, writing their own versions using the
words in the word cloud.
3. A representative from each group reads out the group’s text.
4. Hand out a copy of the original text and ask the children to decide which group’s version
was the closest to the original.
102
© British Council 2012