Original Word Magnets
What does the resource do?
Word Magnets will take a piece of text and break it into individual magnets which can be moved around the screen, resized, removed, colour coded, grouped, sorted and so on. New magnets can also be added at any point.
The resource also offers a range of backgrounds for use in a variety of activities.
How does it work?
Simply type or paste your text into the box on the opening screen and press ‘Next’. You then have the option of choosing a background before your magnets appear.
How can I use it?
There are a multitude of ways to use this resource! However you use it, be sure to share your ideas by adding a ‘Comment’ which will hopefully inspire other visitors.
Comments
[...] Word Magnets [...]
[...] it up and the kids could go to the board and place the words in the correct order. It is called Word Magnet. They say that “Word Magnets will take a piece of text and break it into individual magnets [...]
A demonstration of the ‘Word Magnet’ resource can be found at the IT-Prissans blogg.
Thanks to Anna for taking the time to create this great video,
David
Another excellent post from Nik’s Learning Technology Blog which will be of use to teachers looking for ideas about how to use the ‘Word Magnet’ resource.
Nik has kindly created a video and listed many good ideas for integrating the resource into teaching and learning.
You can view the post here: Revising Short Texts and Syntax on IWB.
Thanks to Nik,
David
Is there anyway that Mandarin Chinese Characters can work with Word Magnets? If it could it would be fantastic.
Hello Pete – thanks for your comment.
I’m afraid I don’t know enough about the Mandarin Chinese language to make a new version of the resource, but if you want to get in touch and give me some advice then I will see what I can do. You can use the contact form on this website.
As an experiment, try the Hebrew version of the Magnet resource – http://www.triptico.co.uk/flashFiles/Hebrew/WordMagnets.html – it recognises a wider variety of characters and may be a good starting point for creating a Mandarin Chinese version. Let me know how you get on.
Thanks,
David
This could be used with younger children to categorize parts of speech – label each word by color coding it – adjective=red, noun=blue, etc. Third graders AND fourth graders constantly need practice with this!
Love Word Magnet. Thank you. My students will love it too and won’t be able to wait to play! Any way to save the screen once created?
Thanks Inez,
The easiest way to save a completed board is to use the ‘Print Screen’ option on your keyboard. You can then paste the image into Paint, PowerPoint etc to display again in the future.
If you wanted to print the finished board on paper, pressing the ‘up’ arrow before doing the ‘print screen’ will give you a printer friendly background.
Hope this helps – you can find more about ‘print screen’ here: http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-in-Microsoft-Windows
David
Hi. I think this is a great tool as well. My question is: How can I use word magnets to place on my wiki and have kids go there and sort the words. I wanted to have the words already typed for them. Is it possible. I tried print screen but of course that did not enable the words to be moved. Any suggestions?
Hello Ana,
Thanks for your comments. It is not possible at the moment but, if you send me an email via the contact page explaining how you would like to use the resource, I will see if I can help. Thanks again,
David
I am going to have students select important words from a text and create poetry using the words. SOOOO cool! A great resource. I am so excited I found this site.
Thanks Camtibs,
I am pleased that you like the resource and I hope that it is useful – would be great to hear how the poetry activity goes,
David
[...] WORD MAGNETS – Now also with a handy Pro version, this is by far the best offering. A teacher can easily [...]
A great post for people looking for inspiration when using the ‘Word Magnet’ resource:
http://historytech.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/tip-of-the-week-open-and-closed-word-sorts/
David
[...] include timers, a random name selector, spinners, also various activities for vocabulary such as Word Magnets, Link Up for assigning words to categories and Word Mix for creating [...]
[...] Words A new addition on the ‘Words’ page – try Word Magnets. [...]
Just stumbled onto this and it looks great. Drag and drop is still one of the best learning tools. Is there a “feedback/correct” feature, e.g. if students rearrange a scrambled sentence on their own?
Thanks ACat – I hope you find the resource to be useful…
There is no feature for checking the order of the magnets – I have always seen the resource as more of an aid to teaching than an assessment tool that students would use on their own…
Thanks for your feedback – it is much appreciated, David.