Tagxedo Creations in the Classroom

Every two weeks, the students have the opportunity to explore a Junior Scholastic magazine. Often, on the first day it is presented, we choose one article to focus on. In this issue, there was an article on the economic promise of multiple African countries. This aligned perfectly with the culmination of the students' global journey research projects on a chosen African country. 

After reading the article together, answering some questions, and discussing different parts, I asked the students to form five small groups. Their task within their group, was to create a word splat (brainstormed list of words) that related to the article as a google doc. This could include words from the actual article, reactions to the article, feelings around aspects of the article, etc. I explained tagxedo (unfortunately I wasn't able to show them/create it right there because of incompatible software for the iPad and school computers) and what these words that they were brainstorming would be used to create. I had them share their google docs with me and that evening I created the tagxedo shown! 

I projected the image the next day during their time to work on their global journey projects and they all loved it! I will definitely use this tool again! I found it to be a fun and effective way to get students to think about a certain topic and what words are important. It presents the student produced information in an extremely interesting and visual way. Now if I could only get it to work at school for the students to do themselves...