Fun with Text

An easy way to get kids a little more enthused about any of the language arts is to have them do fun text projects. CDK's Resource Wiki is full of great sites and resources for fun text projects.

Wordle, a site where you can create "word clouds" could be used for many creative and descriptive projects, but it can also be used to check essays or papers to see what words you are using the most and if you need to vary your word choice. Here's how it works: you paste in text or type it in, the website creates a word cloud, and the words that appear most often in the pasted or typed text are the largest.

My personal favorite is Spell with Flickr. This particular tool is for single words or short phrases. Here's how it works: you type in your word or phrase, and the website generates the word spelled with pictures of letters. This would be great for making name tags for kids (or having them make them for themselves). This would also be a fun site for helping kids practice and visualize spelling words or vocab words.

AmazType is also another fun tool. This website spells the word that you type in (the keyword) using it as its basis for pictures. It takes the pictures from Amazon books, music, and a couple other places.

The point of these tools isn't that they'll do your teaching for you; the point is that they're FUN! They can all be used for neat little supplementary activities and creative activities. Plus, using these resources means you're teaching in a way that fosters 21st century skills.