Working with Crazy Words

crazywords wordle by you.

As part of our unit on the Origins of the English Language, my students work on creating their own words that they hope will someday become part of the English Language. We talk a lot about how words come and go through time, and how language is always alive and taking new shapes. In this vein, a few years ago, I started to use a Wiki to have students add to a dictionary of made-up words. It is now in its fifth year and the number of words exeeds 400 at this point. It’s quite a thing and my students love to add their words to it, knowing they are creating something unique.

We use a wiki (Wikispaces) because it is so darned easy to use and to archive. The simplicity of the platform is perfect and it occurs to me that our wiki is a collaboration over time, as this year’s crop of writers are really working with my young writers from each of the last five years, and with the future in mind, too. That is interesting (for a sci-fi nut like me anyway)

Here are some of the words from this year, and I am including the podcast, too, since they read their words and definitions so that their voice gets archived with their words.

If you want to see the full dictionary:

Peace (in collaboration over time),
Kevin

One Comment
  1. Hi Kevin,
    Hope all is welll with you! I have a tech question I know you can answer 🙂 How do you get the wordle image on your blog? Is there a way to save as a jpeg for my course management threaded discussion? THANKS in advance! Paige

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