End-Of-The-Year Gifts For My Kiddos

We have done several Wordle projects this year and my kids have really enjoyed them, so I decided to make word cloud gifts for each one of them for the end-of-the-year.  First I created a handout for them to complete like the picture below.

Each student filled one out choosing words that they felt best described their classmates.  I will confess that we had to do this twice because the first time they did not put much thought into it and used the same words to describe most of the class.  I knew those wouldn't work, so we redid them with more direction this time.  I suggested that they use their lists of character traits and Thesaurus.  They could not use our no-no words like nice, great, awesome (and a few that I noticed they overused or used inappropriately the first time,) AND they could only use the same word twice for the whole class. They could also not use anything mean (I differentiated between mean and honest when I created the word clouds because some words really did fit.)  I really wanted them to think about the words they chose, and most of them did.  One even came up with the word "loquacious" for a student who really is!

Next, I collected all their lists and compiled a word document with the descriptions for each student.

I individually copied and pasted each list into Tagul.com to create the word clouds for each one and saved the images to my computer.  Then I put all of the images into a powerpoint with a title at the bottom.  It took me most of the day to get them all done.  Here is an example with the words the kids used to describe me...

Last weekend I hit up the dollar store for all the 8X10 frames I could get.

Here is what the finished product looks like...



My daughter LOVES them and keeps telling me I am the greatest teacher EVER!  I hope the kids like them!