We Heart Figurative Language

My 4th graders have been hard at work all year writing narrative and expository essays in preparation for our state assessment in writing (which is in 10 school days! EEEEK!) Every morning we begin writing class with an idiom of the day. We look at an example sentence and try to figure out the phrase from context clues. Then we discuss the meaning and they record it in their folders. Their knowledge of idioms is really growing and they love it! I'd say that as a class our top five favorite idioms (because these are the ones I read the most often in their writing) are:

1.  adding fuel to the fire
2.  chomping at the bit
3.  on pins and needles
4.  my cup of tea
5.  take the bull by the horns

Adding figurative language has really improved their writing. To encourage them to use more idioms and vivid vocabulary we created figurative language word clouds this week. It was also a nice break from our constant essay writing. I first learned about Tagul from seeing this picture on Pinterest that linked to The Polka-Dotted Teacher's blog.

I mean how cute is that?! I followed her instructions (she has a great video tutorial here) and did the same project at the end of last year with my students and here's how they turned out. I didn't frame mine, just laminated them. I laminate everything.

Go watch her tutorial, and then come back here and I'll explain what we did. I'll wait...

So before you get started you'll need to create a free account on Tagul, but then you'll be able to save your word clouds and access them from anywhere! I checked with Tagul's customer support and it's totally cool to create one account as a teacher and allow students to sign in. This is convenient because then every student's project is in one place and easy to print later. Here's a step by step to get you started creating your first cloud:

1. Log in

2. Click CREATE NEW CLOUD

3. Under the Table Tab, click clear all to erase the demo cloud. (The old preview will still show on the right until you click visualize)

4. Click add tag and type in each one separately.

5. Click Visualize to see the new tags you've added.

Once you've got your tags in, it's like the Polka-Dotted Teacher says, "just play around with it!" Next to each word you can pick certain weights, color, fonts, and angles for each tag or leave them all set to random. 

Since my class was creating "We love figurative language and vivid vocabulary" Taguls we made ours hearts by choosing the heart shape under Appearance. This seemed fitting for Valentine's Day as well! There are many shapes to choose from or you can even upload your own custom shape. 

After changing the shape, you can also change fonts and colors by clicking on the menus below and adding the ones you want. If your tags are still set to random your word cloud will change every time you click Visualize. Don't forget to save it (change the name at the top where it says cloud name). 

We went to the computer lab on Thursday and my students got to work typing in their favorite idioms and vocabulary words. They had a lot of fun playing around with color, fonts, and the weight of tags. Check out my student's awesome clouds below! This made for a great bulletin board once they were laminated. I loved seeing my students read and talk about each other's Taguls (and figurative language!!!) before school started yesterday.

Of course, now that they're laminated I see a few spelling errors (ahem...colassal right there in giant lettering), but that's alright... we can go over those in class on Monday. 

I can't wait to use Tagul for future projects. I've already been thinking of a few:

1.  These would make great posters for synonyms (different words for said, big, small, good, bad, etc.) 

2.  Motivational cards before the big state tests.

3.  A sign for classroom door with all students' names.

4.  And I'm definitely creating the end of year gifts like I did last year using The Polka Dotted Teacher's idea.  (The idea originated here using Wordle.)

And the best part about Tagul... it's all free!