Sunday 1 October 2017

Spirals and Waves (updated)


Nearly four years ago I blogged about Festisite, a very useful site that you can use to make word spirals and waves.  Since then, the settings of the site have changed a little, and more shapes have been added.

The options are now listed down the right hand side, and you can see a preview of the eventual output.

To generate the PDF, you now have to click on the "Printable Document" button.  I still recommend selecting a large-size font (I use 26 or 28) and A3 paper in order to generate a large image that will be good quality when you crop and shrink it.  The Preview button speaks for itself, while the Download button will generate the PDF for you.

You can see an example of a spiral above.  Can you find the Spanish numbers 0-15 in it ?  This particular one can be differentiated for lower ability by taking out the extra letters that are not part of the numbers.  The spirals can be used in other ways as well.  For example: how many of each Spanish number 1 to 6 can you see in this spiral ?

The spiral generator will also make egg-shaped spirals:


I like to use the wave setting to make word snakes, like this one:
as well as to make "wavy paragraphs" in which to find words or phrases.

The Valentine setting puts your words around a heart.  This is useful for anything to do with opinions.  For example: Which fruits does this person like?

So have a go with Festisite and see what you can make!