Review by Patricia Monticello Kievlan, Common Sense Education | Updated May 2013
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Word Mover

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Creative app lets students create words, phrases, and “found” poetry

Subjects & skills
  • English Language Arts
  • Social Studies

  • Communication & Collaboration
  • Creativity
Common Sense says (See details)
Teachers say (1 Review)

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Pros: Word Mover is visually attractive and easy to use, and it’s a fun and creative way to engage with language.

Cons: There isn’t an easy way to add a word bank, and the stand-alone learning potential seems superficial without significant depth.

Bottom Line: Word Mover is a visually appealing app that mimics an engaging real-world product; guidance will help kids get the most out of it.

The ReadWriteThink website includes links to numerous lesson plans that integrate Word Mover as an activity in a larger lesson about civil rights, Shakespeare, or persuasive writing. In these contexts, the app could be a boon to educators as they work on units that address these subjects. The app could be even more useful if educators could import new word banks or their own "famous works," though this is not a feature at this point.

Another potential use of the app outside of class might be as a vocabulary tool. It would be great if students could input their own words -- like a vocabulary list for an upcoming test -- and use the app to build sentences that help define or contextualize those words. It can be arduous to add words one at a time, so it's unclear how likely students would be to use the app like this. 

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Word Mover is an app that mimics a consumer product featuring magnetic word tiles that can be arranged to create "found poetry." Students can choose to work from a random word bank or create a new poem from the text of four famous works: the song "America the Beautiful," President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and Shakespeare's Sonnet 18. There's also an option for users to work from a screen marked My Own Words, where users can add their own words one at a time.

The app was produced by a partnership between the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and it's about as literal as it gets in terms of asking students to engage with text. Users touch and drag words into phrases and create poetry from scratch. Students can save their poems to the app's homepage on their own device, and they have the option to share an image of their creation via email or through saving a photo to the device.

While it's visually appealing and exciting as a concept, Word Mover is probably best used in a guided context. Given guidance in a classroom setting, there's great potential for transfer and depth of study: Students get to manipulate and engage with four important texts in a novel way. However, a teacher's voice is critical to add context and realize that potential. Without that, the four famous works seem a little out of place -- it's not clear why these texts are included or what makes them important. Further, there is nothing to tell us why the words that Dr. King and President Lincoln use are so different; there is nothing to explain why the words used in "America the Beautiful" are so different from those in Shakespeare’s sonnet. There’s real potential for a discussion of how word usage changes over time, how poems are different from spoken language, and how different literary devices are used in different types of writing. None of that discussion is included in the app, but the ReadWriteThink website offers some great resources for classroom use of the app.

Overall Rating


Word Mover is visually appealing; it's fun to experiment with color options while manipulating text. A younger user might be engrossed, but older kids may lose interest more quickly.


There are great creative options built in. It's exciting to take an existing text and modify it, and the app could be a great vehicle for teaching simple lessons about subject-verb agreement or more complex lessons on structure and form.


The walk-through help available within the app and on the associated website is detailed and helpful, and the help screen is easily accessible. The app works well with the iPad's built-in accessibility tools, like text-to-speech.

Common Sense Reviewer
Patricia Monticello Kievlan Foundation/nonprofit member

Teacher Reviews

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Featured review by
Karyn W. , Other
Orion Alternative School
Redwood City, United States
Great way to have your students use their subject related vocabulary’s Word Mover app is a great tool to review concepts taught in class. Students can create “found poetry” by choosing from word banks and existing famous works such as the "I Have A Dream" speech and some Shakespeare works. Advanced learners can write more complex poems with more advanced vocabulary. I wish the app allowed students to create their own background art work.
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