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Peabody TeachFor teachers and grown-ups

Alphabet letter wheel

Spin for a letter of the alphabet to start a word hunt, a phonics round or a game of categories.

Tap, flick or press Space

26 entries

Hide a note behind a slice with a bar: cat | a small furry pet. It shows after the spin. Start a line with an emoji to draw it big. Two columns pasted from a spreadsheet work too.

After a spin

Anyone can come up again. Repeats are fine.

Who's away today?

Tap anyone who is away. Their slice is hatched and skipped today only; at midnight they are back. Nobody is deleted.

Drag the wheel round and let go to flick it. Your flick sets the show. The draw is already fair: your browser's secure random generator picks the winner before the wheel moves.

The contents travel inside the link after the # sign, which browsers never send to any server. Anyone you give the link to can read them.

Space spin, or stop sooner · R new round · M sound on or off · F full screen · Esc leave it

Your edits are saved in this browser only, and never sent anywhere. Turns and away marks never go into a link.

How to use it

  1. The wheel already holds 26 entries for “Letter wheel A–Z”. Edit, add or delete lines in the box and it redraws; your changes stay in this browser.
  2. Tap the wheel, press Space, or drag it and let go to flick it. The winner is drawn first with your browser's secure random generator; the pegs, the clicks and the big reveal only show it.
  3. Choose Fade the winner or Remove the winner to use every entry once, or Keep everyone in for repeats. “Original list” brings back the starting entries, and Print makes a paper spinner of the list.

Ideas for class

  • Play “I spy with my little eye” using the letter the wheel lands on as the first sound.
  • Run categories: spin a letter, then students write an animal, a food and a place that start with it in two minutes.
  • Practice letter formation: the class writes the letter in the air, then on a whiteboard, then in a sentence.
  • Let early readers hunt the classroom for something that starts with the letter and bring it, or point to it, at the carpet.
  • Pick the next letter for a word ladder or a hangman style guessing game with the whole class.

Related

Questions

Are the letters upper case or lower case?

Upper case, which are easiest to read from a distance. You can type your own letters into the box, so a lower-case alphabet or just the letters you have taught so far works too.

Can I use only some of the letters?

Yes. Delete the lines you have not taught yet. A kindergarten class working on the first ten letters of a program can spin only those.

Does every letter come up equally often?

Yes. Q is exactly as likely as S. If you want common letters to come up more, type them twice and the wheel gives them two slices.

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