Nomination acceptance speeches wordlized
I’ve been knee deep in the Republican and Democratic national conventions over the last few weeks. And I love the speeches. But I’m also a very visual learner. So I love the speeches even more in Wordle format.
Wordle, the word cloud creator, is a great way to hook kids into conversations about the content and meaning of speeches and documents. In the case of the convention speeches, I would ask questions like:
How are the speeches different from each other in tone, content, and audience?
How are the speeches the same as each other in tone, content, and audience?
Is it possible to guess which political party made which speech based solely on the word cloud? How do you know?
Why do you think the speechwriters selected the language they used in the various speeches?
What words show up most often? Why?
Are there differences between presidential and vice-presidential speeches? Why?
Mitt Romney August 30th
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Barack Obama September 6th
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Paul Ryan August 29th
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Joe Biden September 6th
I love this! Thank you so much for putting this together! My 11th graders will be seeing this soon.
I’m glad you like it. Let us know how it works out with the 11th graders!
glennw
thanks, shared this with ESL college students in Korea, had groups pull 3-5 words out of each wordle ‘word bank’ and had them create new sentences. students had fun comparing common words between the speeches and measured their frequency via size.
Glad you found it useful!
glennw
I’m glad to see you using Wordle in this way. I have been toying with the idea of using Wordle in some way to create the ever-necessary and required “Word Wall” for my room. It’s quick, easy, and fun to look at. It would be fun to have students create their own Wordle’s as well, maybe as a test-review resource so they know what to study. I know I’m going back into your blog, but I have to for my class! I actually like a lot of your posts and can see myself using your blog as a resource in my future career!
Stacy,
Glad you like it! I would encourage you to check out the Tip of the Week category – http://historytech.wordpress.com/tag/tip-of-the-week
You’ll find a ton of handy ideas and tools. Good luck!
glennw