Engage your class by brainstorming about the characters, setting, themes or other aspects of Holes and recording the vocabulary with Wordles.  Ask the students to brainstorm 10 words individually to start.  As you enter the words on the class Wordle, ask how many students had that word on their list and enter it that many times on the Wordle.  The more times you enter a word, the larger it will appear in the Wordle.  That way, everybody's answers get to count and a picture of the class's interest in the novel will emerge.   The above Wordle was created by someone named Ziggy and posted in the Wordle gallery online.

Students could also create Wordles containing vocabulary describing one character in Holes without naming the character.  These could be posted on a bulletin board and the students could attempt to identify the character described in each Wordle. 

Here is a Holes vocabulary activity for the SMARTBoard created by James Hollis at Teachers Love SMARTBoards.  You can view a demo of the activity and download a copy of the Notebook file from his site.   James created a Wordle with vocabulary from the novel Holes and covered up the words with rectangles.  Students came to the SMARTBoard one at a time to touch the rectangle and reveal a word.  Then they used a spinner to tell them what to do with the word:  to use the word in a sentence, tell how many syllables, or give a synonym or antonym.  James had colour coded the rectangles by degree of difficulty so he could differentiate instruction as students came to the board.  You will need a SMARTBoard and Notebook software to use his activity.  However, after viewing the video you may be able to figure out a non-tech way to do the same activity.

Did your students notice that the name Stanley Yelnats is a Palindrome?  Students may have fun trying to create their own word and phrase palindromes.

Holes Vocabulary Boosters from Scholastic selects 25 vocabulary words from the novel. These words can be used to build your student's vocabulary.