Wordles are particularly suited to short activities such as warm-ups or as prerunners/introductions to larger discussions and tasks. They are also an eyecatching way of presenting familiar terms for revision/introduction. Here are some possibilities:

• Why not start a class with some wordles made from different Shakespeare tragedies and see if they can guess which play is which?

• How about presenting a word cloud of one of Hamlet’s soliloquies used as the basis for a discussion of themes, followed by students delivering short sections of the speech themselves?

• Create a wordle of key terms, display for a limited amount of time and challenge students to remember as many as they can in that time limit.

• Play a piece of music for students and ask them to come up with three words to describe how it makes them feel (this could be a homework task using email/witiffi for ease of cutting and pasting, or could be created in the classroom if you are a fast typer!). Create a cloud of their own words and display with the music playing to see how they match up.

• Get your students to put their essay draft into wordle. Have they overused certain words? Is there a distinct lack of key terms?