To read more posts on my blog about The Great Gatsby CLICK HERE.
Below you will find wordles of each of the chapters in The Great Gatsby. In case you are not familiar with wordle.net, it takes texts and gives a visualization of the most frequently used words. The bigger the word, the more frequently it is used.
HERE is a link to other posts dealing with The Great Gatsby.
(To see a wordle for “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, click HERE.)
CLICK on the thumbnails to see a larger version.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Please let me know how you use these in lessons and writing assignments. I think other readers would appreciate it.
Ben Davis
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This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 2:41 pm and is filed under By Ben. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Thank you for the info on wordle, I am wondering how you created the thumbnails and the pop out image of the love song. I havnt been successful in doing similiar fro the site ?
If you mean the individual pictures coming up on a different screen when you click on them, I just did that as an option through this blog.
However, I made the thumbnails by doing a “screen grab” on my Mac computer. In fact, the original size was done with the screen grab, but I chose to make them appear small when I wrote that post in my blog. I will do a post this week on doing screen grabs on both Mac and Windows computers. Keep an eye out for it.
[…] allow you to take a snapshot of a specified area of your screen. That is how I made the thumbnails for my post about using Wordle with Gatsby. Below are some options for both Mac and Windows users (I have divided them […]
Thank you for allowing us to use these!
We are writing a paper based on chapters 1-5 right now…going to have the Wordle their paper and place on their cover.
Thanks again!
That is a great idea! That would also be a great way to look at word usage in one’s paper. Thanks for giving me an idea, Tammy.
I love Wordle and I’ve been trying to come up with some creative ways to use them in the classroom. What do you actually DO with the Gatsby Wordles?
Ben–
Just searching for some fresh ideas for Gatsby. I had been looking over these wordles a full five minutes before I realized I was on your site! Hope things are going well at the RMWP. We’re gearing up for DC and ISI–busy times!
Take care,
Heather Adkins
Thank you for posting this!
I just tried this today and it went quite well. It was especially useful as a way to hook in students who have a difficult time with analysis. By having them choose a word, I at least had a place to build from instead of a blank slate. From that point I was able to craft questions that could lead them to deeper thought.
Heather,
I am glad you came my way. I hope you were able to use the Gatsby stuff. RMWP is doing VERY well. We just had a conference (With Kylene Beers and Bob Probst). We expected 30 to register, but by the time the conference came around we had 200. It was great.
If you ever want to write for Teacheng.Us, let me know.
Ben
Mrs. S,
You asked me what I do with wordle back in February. Sorry I am just now getting around to answering.
I like to do the following:
1. put these up in front of the class
2. have students pick two words from them and write about the significance of the words in the context of the chapter AND/or the whole book
3. after the write for a few minutes, I open the floor to discussion.
Alternatives:
*Use it as a quiz.
*Have students write and then make a people (a wordle using people–okay that was dumb) so they can discuss similar ideas.
*Discuss how these words relate to the themes of the novel
*Break them into groups and assign a color (form the wordle) and allow them to pick the most significant words for their color.
I hope this helps.
Ben
I just discovered Wordle through a 23 Things project I’m involved in at school, and had the same idea about running chapters of texts through to create maps of significant words & ideas. (Coincidentally, I also used Gatsby, since it’s the next text we’re covering.) I’m thinking of using it as you suggested, as a way to clue students in to what motifs and characters might be worth tracking.
I’m also thinking I might have students upload their own essays and responses to Wordle to see which words figure prominently in their own writing - hopefully, they could see that the ideas they intended to be important show up that way, but it might also reveal some weak word choice, and give them ideas about where they might be able to come up with more precise or vivid vocabulary.