Wordle

ESL and Wordle
Two years ago I attended a week long training for G.L.A.D. (Guided Language Acquisition Design). It was one of the best experiences of my professional career. We learned all about ways to help ESL students gain language and/or new language. We were in an actual classroom for five full days seeing most of their techniques first hand. With G.L.A.D. the big ideas include making everything extremely visual for these students.

This is where Wordle comes into play. I have used Wordle before, but didn't really think of it in this light until now. As fourth grade teachers, who are under extreme pressure to get students to pass our state standardized test, my teaching partner and I have hit vocabulary hard. We have come to the conclusion that students really struggle in terms of vocabulary. We have done several things to aid this. Because of my G.L.A.D. training, I have chart paper plastered all over my room with vocabulary words and learning targets. Everything is color coordinated. Our recent project has been vocabulary quizzes that have the top 100 reading, writing and math terms intermixed. Students must pass one quiz, with 10 words, before they can move on to the next.

Using Wordle with ESL students can be a great way for them to get more exposure to these words. The only issue I see with it, is that it they won't be able to stick to the color coding they are use to. That I feel, however, is a minor problem. Generally speaking, our ESL students pass the quizzes at a slower rate than non-ESL students. By using these word clouds, they may be able to put their visual learning style to good use. In fact, I'm going to try this on Monday.

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