I would like to know how everyone uses their word walls, where do words come from etc... I would like to use one this year in my classroom but don't want to just "put up words" and not really use them. If this has been discussed before sorry. I just think this board is a great source of information.
I love word wall words. I usually only put up the kid's names and the most frequently used words that they have difficulty spelling. I'm not sure what grade you teach but I found a great book this summer. I believe that it is call Month by Month Phonics for 2nd Grade (they have it for other grades too). It is written by I believe Patricia Cunningham (the book is in my car). It has wonderful ideas for introducing word wall words each week.
It's the Carson Dellosa one for 2nd grade. It was a worthwhle investment. I intro 5 words each week. We do different activties, chants, etc. I think I got most of the things we do from 4-blocks. After the week is up, I add the 5 words to the big word wall and intro 5 more words. This takes until about March/Apr. Then we review with the whole board. I also do review throughout the year on the whole board. Again, I got those activites from 4 blocks. I have them on laminated cardstock on a ring so I can just flip through and find an activity. That way the kids get a variety of activities.
This year I am trying something a little bit different. I am going to have two "word walls".
Word Wall 1- This word wall will be called "Glue Words". This is where we will put our sight words (I use Fry's Instant Word Lists). I teach the students that these are the words that Glue together the sentence so we must memorize them. Each of the words are on Glue bottles that I made out of construction paper.
Word Wall 2- This word wall will be for word Families. I am calling it Chunk Words. I am going to have each of the short vowels on the wall. Underneath the corresponding short vowel I will introduce the word families as we learn them. ALSO, each word family will have an environmental print object to go with it. For example underneath the short vowel a will be -at (on a piece of cheese made from construction paper....chunk of cheese!). This piece of cheese will be attached to a KIT KAT wrapper with the at underlined with permanent marker. Then as a class we will come up with at words and our list will be posted underneath.
I hope that makes sense. In the past I had used the commercial word walls and I just found I wasnt using them enough and neither were the kids. This way I can pick the words they need to know and it will correlate directly with our lessons!!
I have a section in my room that is called Wild Words. At the beginning of the year there are no words just the title of the board with monkeys hanging. Each morning I put up one new word on the chalk board. We do word attack strategies with it as well. These words come from a book that I have. Most of the time I find words that tie in with what we are learning. After we discuss the word of the day the students draw a picture in their wild word notebook to help them remember the meaning. I let them share what they drew. Sometimes we will play vocbaulary charades after we have learned two weeks worth of words. I have a wild word student who is in charge of copying the word onto a sentence strip and then they put it on the wild word bulletin board. We have a test every other week.
I love the word wall. If you use a reading series, use the 4 - 5 vocab words for each story to add each week. If not, the Dolch or Fry's list is a great start. I also recomend Patricia Cunningham's Month by Month Phonics - a very worthwhile investment with lots of phonics and writing ideas in it, not just word wall.
On Monday I add the new words for the week into their agendas to study at home (some teachers call them M.O.O.S.E. binders but we have purchased agendas) Tuesday I post them in fun shapes on the front board and we do some of the fun word wall practice activiites, Wednesday they go up on the word wall, we print them (I create the template on www.handwritingworksheets.com) and we pick them out of our stories and hilight in personal dictionaries, Thursday they have to read them to me (out of order) as a sort of mini test. I move the words on the funshapes out into the hall behnind my door for another week so they can practice them while getting coats from their lockers or lined up for bus/parent pick up. I stick to this schedule most of the year, and my class has a very good average for vocab mastery - about 92%. Next week when writing the new words into the agenda I put their score for last week and record the words they didn't get as well as this week's new words. If a child is struggling with vocab I regularly send practice ideas home in the agenda.
I've found that making my word wall with my students works best for me. The commercial ones are very nice and I know a lot of people like them, but I like the ownership that comes with making it together. I use the large size of post-it's- different colors. I introduce 5 words a week. I tell the word and write it in front of the students- vowels in red, consonants in blue. Depending on what they already know, we'll underline a word chunk or blend. Sometimes I draw a little picture to help them remember. Whatever works for that particular group of students at that time. Like bertie, I do very short activities with the words each day (5 min. max) and post them on the word wall with the kids watching at the beginninng of the next week.
Don't forget that once a group of words is up, you still need to encourage word wall use. Cross-referencing is a tricky skill for children. I play different games on Fridays that require children to scan their eyes over the words and familiarize them with the location of words.
brett158: I've always wanted to make a word chunk wall, and I like your idea for a set up. You mentioned that you'll have each of the short vowels on the wall with the chunks under it. Are you going to make chunks for long vowels too? (eet, ain, etc...)
Also, would you have a place near by for new onsets? (ch, sh, th, wh)
I belong to edhelper.com ( great resource) you can create your list and the program will create the word cards +++a picture to print out...wish I had that when I was a primary teacher. You may want to take a peek.
07-26-2006, 07:56 PM
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