6 Great Ways To Use Word Clouds

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Word Cloud for Art Lessons For Kids

Have you heard of Wordle, Tagul or Tagxedo? These sites help you create what is known as a word cloud from the content found on your blog, tweets, tags, or other sites you like. The more times a word is used in the content, the bigger the word is in the cloud.

I used Wordle because you don’t need to sign up for an account like Tagul and for some reason I couldn’t see my word cloud in Tagxedo. Tagxedo did look interesting though because you can add your word clouds onto products and buy them. All I had to do on Wordle was type in the Url for Art Lessons For Kids and the most frequently used words I have on this entire blog came out as one big word cloud. How awesome is this? I absolutely love that the word ‘students‘ stands out the most.  It’s all about them when I create my lessons so I am so happy the cloud reflected this.

Here are 5 other creative ways that you can use this fun tool in your classroom.

1. At the beginning of the year, ask your students to type in words to describe their feelings about art or write an essay and use this to create their word cloud. Print these off and save them. Do this again at the end of the year and see what changes have occurred throughout the year. Save them for their portfolios.

2. Your students can create word clouds for research projects about an artist, art movement, a particular work of art, etc. and display these around your classroom along with their finished art work.

3. You can make a cloud using words to describe you, your teaching philosophy (great for a resume), your classroom expectations/rules, supplies, you name it! and display it really creatively where your students will see it.

4. Make a word cloud with all of you fears and frustrations you currently have in your classroom. See what stands out the most and work on turning these into positives. Sometimes all it takes is to see and be aware of what bugs you to take action and fix it!

5. Save all you report card comments onto one document and use this to make a report card word cloud. This will help you see what words you are using the most and hopefully they will be caring and positive words. :)

And the most important and first way you should use a word cloud is to:

6. Type in all the adjectives to describe what you love about teaching and what makes you the most wonderful art teacher ever. They can be words, sentences, thoughts, a poem or whatever you like and see what word cloud comes up. Stick this somewhere you will see it every day just as a little reminder when you are having one of those days. I’ll give you the first word you can use: inspiring…

I hope you start using word clouds and enjoy making them as much as I am. Use the share buttons below to let others in on the fun. Can you think of other great ways to use word clouds?

By The Way…

Art Lessons for Kids is on Facebook  and we are GROWING. Hit the  ”Like” button and join the conversation. We are ALL waiting for you!! You can also follow my adventures on Twitter (@Ms_Alejandra) or see what I am pinning over at Pinterest.

Finally…

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Art Lessons for Kids Newsletter- Want to Sign up?

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Hello from Vienna!

Happy New Year everyone! Doesn’t it feel like the year has flown by? And now we are half way into the school year which is incredible to me because as many of you know, I have taken a year off from teaching to concentrate on making this blog even better and write more eBooks.  With half a year left of ‘me’ time, this means I have to stay focused. My dream is to eventually become a full time blogger, seminar leader, motivational coach and more, by the time my son graduates in 8 years time.

Anyway, exciting news happening here at Art Lessons for Kids. I have started a newsletter! I have been wanting to do this for a while but didn’t know how to do it with a wordpress.com blog. Well I finally figured it out and I am so excited it’s a reality. There are a few newsletter services out there so I finally went with aweber because of the great reviews they had. I totally recommend these guys if you are planning to do something similar. The set up was easy and it took me a few hours to get it running. As soon as I put the links on my blog (see the side bar) I received 10 subscribers!!

What is the difference between subscribing to a blog and subscribing to a newsletter?

When you subscribe to a blog, you receive the new posts straight to your inbox which makes it quite handy if you are busy and don’t have the time to go to your favorite websites to see what’s new.

When you subscribe to a newsletter, you get information and news that is exclusive to you for subscribing. And the best part is that the newsletter is also delivered to your inbox.

Note : You do have to sign up twice though as they are separate services-but oh so worth it!

If you want to receive my weekly Art Lessons for Kids newsletter with teaching tips, how-to’s, inspiration and more goodies that you won’t find here on the blog, then go ahead and sign up here, below this post or click on the link in the side bar. As a thank you, you will receive a link to a copy of my eBook Creative Art Projects for Kids for Anytime. ( Note: right click on the link you receive after subscribing to download the eBook to your computer.)

What Else is New?

Video training and workshops are all in the works as well as 5 new eBooks coming out filled with awesome lessons that will help you cut down on your planning time and concentrate on the fun stuff in class.

In this new year I wish you all the success, health, happiness and abundance this fabulous world can give you. Make it your goal to be the most amazing and inspiring teacher you can be. Make it your goal to make your students smile more often. Make it your goal to bring out the artist inside every child and help them shine. I know you can do it!

All the best,
Alejandra

One More Thing…

Art Lessons for Kids has a Facebook page and you can follow my adventures on Twitter (@Ms_Alejandra)? Click on over. I would love to see you there!

THANKS and Happy Holidays!

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Happy Holidays! I just wanted to take the time to thank you for following Art lessons for Kids. You inspire me to be here and share with you all of my fabulous art lessons and teaching tips that work for me and for sure will work for you too. I hope that in return, I inspire you to be the most wonderful art teacher you can be!

Sign up for my new weekly newsletter and as a BIG thank you, I’ll send you a link to a special FREE e-book with three of my favorite art lessons that have been HUGE hits with my students. Use them in your classroom, home or after school art club. If you need to use these lessons for commercial purposes, please contact me first so we can work something out. As always, feel free to adapt and change the lessons as you see fit and according to your needs.

Click on the image above or on this link to sign up.

If you do use one of the lessons I would love to hear about it!  You can leave a comment below this post or over at the Art Lessons for Kids Facebook page. A tweet or a link back from your site or blog back to me would be nice too!

Once again, happy holidays and may you use this time to spend it with your family and loved ones and re-energize yourself for a wonderful new year of MAGNIFICENT teaching.

Here’s to your success today and everyday. You are an amazing teacher and never forget this!

Ms. Alejandra