TechnoPlot Predictions

What words are displayed?

How are they sized?

What might be the main parts of the plot?

Do you know the title of this book?

If you said, Fireflies by Julie Brinckloe you are correct! 

This lesson is adapted from Common Sense Media: Making Predictions about Plot Using Word Clouds.

To begin the lesson, you would want to make a word cloud with a book that students have already read. I used wordle.net to create my word cloud by copying and pasting the entire text of the book into the site. (There are other sites and apps available.) This will give students a chance to recognize how word clouds are created; the more the word is repeated the larger it is in the word cloud. 

Next have students create or use a teacher created word cloud of a book they are going to read. Have students make connections between the words in the word cloud and the plot of the story. What might be your prediction for the summary of the plot based on the word cloud?

Students could also make word clouds as an alternative to a reading response. Have students think about the main idea or theme of the story using words in the book. Then have them create a word cloud to connect the plot with the words. 

Do you have older students? Have students create word clouds in Google Slides for each chapter of their book. They can write a quick plot prediction. After reading the chapter, have students compare and contrast their predictions with the actual story. What parts did they predict accurately? Which parts were different?

Happy Wordling!