State of the Union - Video, Transcript, and Wordle

Last night President Obama gave his State of the Union Address. (Did you submit your questions to him?) For those of you who would like to show it to your students, have them analyze the transcript, or have them analyze the Republican response, I have posted resources for doing those things.

Here is the video.


The Republican response.


The transcript of President Obama's speech.

Below is an image of a Wordle generated from the transcript of President Obama's State of the Union Address. (Click to enlarge)













Applications for Education
CNN Student News has a short overview of President Obama's speech and the Republican response. I did not post that segment in the list above because I think it is important for students to learn how to interpret and fact check the speeches of both parties. To get started on this process students can use Wordle to figure out which words or phrases appear most frequently in the transcript of President Obama's speech. They can then explore why those words were so frequently used.