🎡 How to create a Spin the Wheel activity

Spin the Wheel is one of the most popular "open-ended" templates on Wordwall. It’s perfect for picking students, choosing topics, or gamifying any lesson with a spin of the wheel. Because it is open-ended, it doesn't track scores, making it a stress-free tool for classroom engagement.

IN THIS ARTICLE:

• How is Spin the Wheel played?
• How and what do you type into Edit content for Spin the Wheel?
• Where can I find some more examples?

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How the activity is played

The screen displays a colourful, segmented wheel that spins smoothly on an axis.

• The interaction: Users spin the wheel by clicking the central Spin it button, or by "grabbing" the outer rim of the wheel with a mouse click or touch swipe and giving it a physical flick.

• The result: The wheel spins rapidly with realistic ticking sound effects, gradually slowing down until a selector tab isolates a winning slice. The interface then dynamically zooms in on the chosen segment.

• Post-spin actions: After a segment is selected, the presenter can choose:

  • Resume: Zooms back out to show the full wheel configuration for the next turn.

  • Eliminate: Removes the winning segment entirely from the wheel so it cannot be landed on again (ideal for calling on students sequentially or covering unique lesson prompts).

    

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Creating your Spin the Wheel activity

1. Click Create Activity on your dashboard and choose Spin the Wheel.

   

   
    

2. Add your content:

   • Instruction: Type an optional objective or prompt at the top of the editor (e.g., "Who will answer the next question?" or "Define this target term").

   • Wheel items: Enter the text entries for each wheel slice partition (e.g., student names, math problems, or vocabulary verbs).

   • Image/Audio (Optional): Click the image icon inside any row slot to anchor a picture to a segment instead of, or alongside, your text entries.

3. Click Add an item or press Enter to add additional segments to the wheel structure.

4. Click Done. Wordwall will distribute the items evenly across the geometric wheel layout.

   
    

5. Scroll down to Visuals style to add a creative style to your activity, or tailor the difficulty in the Options panel below the activity:

   

   • Timer
     • None: No time limit is enforced on the total activity session, letting your group discussion proceed naturally.
     • Count up: Displays an ascending stopwatch that tracks exactly how long your entire wheel selection or icebreaker session has been active.
     • Count down: Sets a strict time limit (e.g., 5 minutes). The activity cuts off automatically if the countdown clock hits zero.
   • Spin power
     • Low: Configures the wheel to revolve with a lighter velocity, bringing it to a selection result more quickly after a spin is triggered.
     • High: Ramps up the rotation force, causing the wheel to spin longer and spin faster to build up extra classroom suspense.
   • Random
     • Shuffle item order: When checked, the wheel segments are mixed and scrambled across the layout every time the activity is launched, breaking up the original sequential layout order defined in the editor.
   • Saving options
     • Apply to this activity: Saves these specific layout configurations only for the active wheel file you are currently editing.
     • More: Click this drop-down to find:
       • Set as default for template: Remembers these visual style and rotation preferences as your standard configuration layout for all future activities you build using Spin the Wheel.
       • Revert to default: Clears your recent changes and restores the options panel back to your previously saved personal defaults.
       • Revert to author's setting: Restores the board parameters back to the original layout configured by the initial community creator.

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Creating Spin the Wheel with AI

You don't need to be a prompt expert to use our AI. It is designed to be intuitive and accessible directly from the activity creator.

1. Click Create Activity and select Spin the Wheel.

   

   
    

2. Look for the ✨ Generate with AI button (magic wand icon) at the top right of the content table.

   
    

3. Enter your content:

   • Topic: Type a thematic focus like "Conversation Starters for Morning Meetings" or "Random Number Generator 1-50."

   • Text / Notes: Paste a plain text list of concepts, vocabulary words, or student names. The AI will parse the list and clean them into structured individual wheel rows.

   • File: Upload a PDF or Word doc. Wordwall AI will analyse the text architecture, extract key data parameters or names, and instantly compile a multi-segmented wheel tailored directly from your documents.

4. Click Generate. Review the created segments, alter or refine any slice values if necessary, and hit Done.

   

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Need inspiration?

Some examples of Spin the Wheel activities have been created by our users and shared with the Wordwall resource community.