Word clouds for moms

Can you express your love for Mom in words? Yes. Yes, you can.

The 25 words we used in this word cloud:

MOM


mum


mommy


mother


best


smart


wise


loving


kind


caring


beautiful


graceful


funny


joyful


happy


special


wonderful


dear


precious


courageous


hardworking


strong


hero


inspiration


parent

Why not have your students create Wordles, or Word Clouds, for their moms for Mother’s Day? You can use the directions in this Character Word Cloud freebie but instead of having your students create them for a book character, they can use words that describe moms.

Make sure they understand that the more times they write a word, the larger it appears in the word cloud. So if they want to have the word «Mom» or «Mother» as the largest word, they should type it many more times than the other words. Use the directions in this freebie to have them create a Word Cloud, but instead of the usual character trait words, have them think of words to describe mothers, such as loving, thoughtful, resourceful, and so on. You might even want to begin the lesson with a short brainstorming session to generate a list of words and have students choose no more than 8 to 10 for their final product.

The end result might look like the Wordle on the right. Your students could print it and include in a card or use it to create a laminated placemat or other project. Be sure to check their work for spelling errors before you allow them to print it!

You can download the Character Word Cloud freebie from my TeachersPayTeachers store. You can also find my free Mother’s Day Coupons there. I hope you enjoy both of these resources!

Laura Candler
Teaching Resources

Variety and novelty in English lessons encourage learners to be more engaged. On the contrary, monotonous tasks, no matter how useful they are, cause boredom. How to bring variety without too many changes in the process of learning vocabulary? Use word clouds.

 Word clouds are a graphical representation of words and words combinations. They can be used for:

• vocabulary revision
• presenting lexis
• practicing new words
• student’s projects.

It is just a more visually appealing way to teach vocabulary. Instead of using lists, which students are probably fed up with, make clouds. You can utilize them for word searches, making monologues and dialogues, word games, writing tasks, etc.

Here are some examples of the tasks.

Task 1

Make a story about a detective investigating a case using all the words and tell your partner  (the teacher).

Task 2

Work in pairs. Ask and answer five questions using the words.

Task 3

Give a definition of one of the words. Can your partner guess the word? Swap roles.

There are some services for creating word clouds:

Word Art

Wordle

Word clouds

I personally prefer to use Word art because it’s possible to create clouds containing collocations. As we know teaching collocations is more effective for learners. Other services just break the word pairs into single words.

Let’s see how to create word clouds using Word art. It’s quick and easy, no registration is required. So click ‘Create’ and make your cloud.

Step 1

Fill in the words or word combinations. You can type as many words as you need, even 30 or even 50. It’s possible to Capitalize letters, use the UPPER or lower case. Click ‘Options’ and opt for repetition of the words as you see in one of the pictures above or choose no repetition.

Step 2

Choose the shape of your cloud: animals, nature, people or some holidays themes. If you want to see the changes, click the red button ‘Visualize’.

For example, this charming ladybird will definitely catch kids’ interest.

Step 3

Choose a font which you like. There are more than 50 fonts to select.

Step 4

Pick out a layout: horizontal, vertical, crossing words, dancing words, slopes and random. The layout will depend on the task and the learners. Teens prefer something less ordinal and more creative. For adults, I usually make more conservative things like a horizontal layout.

Step 5

Choose a style: colours of the words and the background. If you want to change a colour of the words, click ‘Words colours’ and ‘Custom’ and add more colours to the pallette.

Step 6

To apply all the changes, press ‘Print’ or ‘Download’ your cloud and enjoy it in your lessons.

You’ll see a common tool in classrooms, meeting rooms and beyond these days: the humble, beautiful, collaborative word cloud.

Why? Because it’s an attention winner. It perks up any audience by providing the chance to submit their own opinions and contribute to a discussion based on your questions.

Any of these 12 best live word cloud generator tools can earn you total engagement (including WordItOut, and Free Wordle Tools…), wherever you need it. Let’s dive into these free collaborative websites!

More Tips with AhaSlides Templates

Grab the attention in the room. Get more word cloud examples. These word cloud templates on AhaSlides are guaranteed engagement!

Let’s clear something up before we begin. What’s the difference between a word cloud and a collaborative word cloud?

In general, a collaborative word cloud not only displays the frequency of words, but is also great for making a presentation or lesson super interesting and transparent.

Check out these collaborative word cloud examples… And learn how to use. live word cloud generator with AhaSlides

Ice Breakers

Get the conversation flowing with an ice breaker. A question like ‘where are you from?’ is always engaging for a crowd and is a great way to loosen people up before the presentation begins.

Opinions

Display the views in the room by asking a question and seeing which answers loom largest. Something like ‘who’s going to win the World Cup?’ could really get people talking!

Testing

Reveal some telling insights with a quick test. Ask a question, like ‘what’s the most obscure French word ending in “ette”?’ and see which answers are the most (and least) popular.

You’ve probably figured this out yourself, but these examples are simply impossible on a one-way static word cloud. On a collaborative word cloud, however, they can delight any audience and pool focus where it should be – on you and your message.

💡 You can download a free template for each of these use cases here!

Given the engagement that a collaborative word cloud can drive, it’s no wonder the amount of word cloud tools has exploded in recent years. Interaction is becoming key in all walks of life, and collaborative word clouds are a massive leg-up.

Here are 7 of the best…

1. AhaSlides

✔ Free

AhaSlides is free software that gives users the tools to make interactive presentations using an arsenal of slide types. Multiple choice, rating scale, brainstorm, Q&A and quiz slides to name just a few.

One of its most popular slide types is the word cloud, and it’s not difficult to see why. It’s possibly the most simple slide type amongst the many on offer; it requires, at minimum, a single question for the audience to answer.

Yet, if you want to spice up your word cloud with background images, preset themes and various colours, AhaSlides happily obliges. In terms of customisation, it’s one of the best-looking and most flexible collaborative word cloud tools out there.

👏 Outstanding feature: You can even embed audio into your word cloud. The audio plays from the presenter’s laptop and each audience member’s phone, though this requires a paid plan from $1.95 a month.

Settings Options

Appearance Options

Make the Best Word Cloud

Beautiful, attention-grabbing word clouds, for free! Make one in minutes with AhaSlides.

2. Beekast

✔ Free

If big bold words and colour are your thing, then Beekast is a great option for a collaborative word cloud. Its standard white background and huge fonts bring the words into focus, and all are neatly arranged and easy to see.

The drawback here is that Beekast is not the easiest to use. Once you’re thrust into the interface, you’ll have to navigate the overwhelming amount of options yourself, and it can take a while to set up the word cloud you want.

Another downside is that you can only have 3 live participants (or ‘sessions’) on the free plan. That’s a pretty strict limit.

👏 Outstanding feature: You can moderate the submitted words from your audience. Change the text slightly or simply refuse the whole submission.

Settings Options

Appearance Options

Beekast doesn’t come with appearance customisation options

3. ClassPoint

✔ Free

ClassPoint is one of the most unique and best word cloud generators in the list because of one thing. It’s not a standalone bit of software, but a plug-in that works directly with PowerPoint.

The upshot of this is that it’s a seamless transition from your presentation directly to your word cloud. You simply pose a question on a slide, open a word cloud on that slide, then invite everyone to join and submit words using their phones.

The downshot of this is that it’s a fairly simple tool without much customisation in terms of settings or appearance. But in terms of ease of use, it’s pretty unmatched in this list.

👏 Outstanding feature: You can even add background music to fill in the silence while people are submitting their answers!

Settings Options

Appearance Options

ClassPoint doesn’t come with appearance customisation options. You can change the appearance of the PowerPoint slides, but your word cloud will appear as a blank pop-up.

Need a Word Cloud Fast?

Check this video to see how to go from free signup to audience responses in under 5 minutes!

4. Slides With Friends

✔ Free

Slides With Friends is a startup with a penchant for gamifying remote meetings. It’s got a friendly interface and doesn’t take long to figure out what you’re doing.

Likewise, you can set up your word cloud in seconds by just writing the prompt question directly on the slide. Once you present that slide, you can click it again to reveal the responses from your audience.

The downside is that the word cloud itself lacks a bit of color and space. It’s all black lettering and super close together, meaning it’s not easy to tell submissions apart when there are lots of them.

👏 Outstanding feature: The question slide will show avatars of all participants. When the participant submits their word, their avatar goes from faded to bold, meaning you know exactly who’s submitted and who hasn’t!

Settings Options

Appearance Options

5. Vevox

✔ Free

Much like Beekast, Vevox operates more in the realm of ‘activities’ than ‘slides’. It’s not a presentation tool like AhaSlides, but more like a series of separate activities that need to be manually turned off and on. It also offers one of the best free word cloud generators in the market.

If you’re after a word cloud with a serious air to it, then Vevox might be the one for you. The blocky structure and muted colour scheme are a good fit for cold, hard business, and while you can change the theme to get something more colourful, the palette of the words remain similar, meaning they can be a little tough to tell apart from each other.

Settings Options

Appearance Options

6. LiveCloud.online

✔ Free

Sometimes, all you want in life is a no-frills collaborative word cloud. Nothing fancy, nothing customisable – just a big white space where your participants can submit their words from their phones.

LiveCloud.online ticks all of those boxes. It requires no signup to use – just head to the site, send the link to your participants and you’re off.

Naturally, being as no-frills as it is, the design isn’t really up to much. It’s sometimes hard to tell the words apart because all of them are the same colour, and most of them are the same size.

👏 Outstanding feature: You can save and open previously used word clouds, though that involves signing up for free.

Settings Options

Appearance Options

LiveCloud.online doesn’t come with appearance customisation options.

7. Kahoot

✘ Not Free

One of the top classroom tools for quizzes added a word cloud feature in 2019, letting students contribute to a live word cloud along with their fellow classmates.

Like everything Kahoot-ish, their word cloud takes on vibrant colours and easily readable text. Different coloured backgrounds for words keep them separate and clear, and each response is slowly revealed, building from the least to the most popular one.

However, like most other things Kahoot-ish, the word cloud is hidden behind a paywall. Also, there are very limited options for any kind of customisation.

👏 Outstanding feature: You can preview your word cloud to get an idea of how it will look when you try for real.

8. Tagxedo

This tool helps you create tag clouds from URLs, blogs, tweets, and so much more. It also allows the user to import their fonts and shapes to be used in the word cloud! Please note that you must download Microsoft Silverlight, which is only supported by Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari, to use Tagxedo’s Word Cloud generator.

9. Slido Word Cloud

Flash a discussion with your crowd by allowing them to create a live word cloud. With Slido Word Cloud, you can also create quizzes & games, live polls, live surveys and to host Q&A Sessions.

However, with Slido Word Cloud, you cannot interact directly by dropping icons, or leave comments to the presenters!

10. MonkeyLearn WordCloud Generator

A free word cloud tool, MonkeyLearn WordCloud Generator, stands apart in the way it reduces words to their root form (i.e., stemming) and identifies the popular words by analysing how rare, descriptive, and long they are, as compared to just looking at the frequency.

11. WordClouds.com

This is a user-friendly tool that offers a wide variety of customization as well as formatting options. It is also a great tool for using MS Excel.

12. WordItOut

It is a simple and effective wordcloud creator that recognizes emojis and various symbols. It also allows you to edit your wordcloud to filter out any words you don’t want to be included.