Venn Diagram Maker

How to use it

Pick a ready-made sort, such as mammals and animals that live in water, even numbers and multiples of 3, or metal and magnetic materials, or type your own circle titles. Add chips by typing a word or number and pressing Add; separate words with commas to add a whole list. Drag each chip from the tray into the place where it belongs. Chips line up neatly in each part of the diagram, so the class can read them from the back of the room.

On a touch screen or keyboard, tap or tab to a chip and press Enter, then choose a part of the diagram from the buttons, or tap a spot in the diagram. The same panel lets you change a chip's words or delete it. Switch between two and three circles, and type a label for the outside box.

Ready-made sorts have an answer key. Press Check to mark each placed chip right or wrong, with a short reason for each one that needs to move. Your own sorts have no key, so talk them through together. All back to tray shuffles every chip back for another try. The diagram saves in this browser, so it is still there next time. Print gives a clean copy of the finished diagram, and Print blank makes a worksheet: the empty circles with their titles and a word bank to sort.

What a Venn diagram teaches

A Venn diagram is a picture of sorting and classifying. Each circle holds everything that fits one rule. The overlap holds things that fit both rules at once, so a whale goes where "Mammals" and "Lives in water" cross. Anything that fits neither rule goes outside the circles but inside the box, which stands for everything being sorted. An empty part is an answer too: in the magnets sort, almost nothing is magnetic without being metal.

This is the start of sets and logic. The overlap is "A and B", the whole of both circles is "A or B", and the outside is "not A and not B". With numbers, students see that multiples of 2 and 3 meet at the multiples of 6. In science and reading, a Venn diagram is a compare-and-contrast organizer: two animals, two materials or two characters, with what they share in the middle.

• Why is the middle of the even numbers and multiples of 3 sort full of multiples of 6?
• Can you think of anything for an empty part of the diagram? If not, why not?
• Compare two characters from a story: what goes in the middle?
• Make a sort with three circles and explain one chip in the centre.

Free to use, no account needed. It runs in your browser: nothing you type, and no sound from your microphone, is sent to Fieldbook.