WORD WALLS
I can honestly say, in my 27 years in first grade,
I have “redone” my word wall…
probably 26 times!
My dilemma is always the same…
How to put them on the wall so kids can
access them ( at ANY reading level!)?
At first, I thought “A..B..C” order.
Then, I thought “by curriculum unit..week 1..week 2, etc”.
Next, I thought ” phonics sounds ..short a..short e…etc”.
Last, I thought “they don’t even LOOK at IT!”
and so…
I WAS FRUSTRATED!
What to do? What to do?
ASK THE KIDS!!!
So what do THEY want?
What will THEY use?
What do THEY want it to look like?
And they TOLD ME!!
They helped me “SOLVE” our Word Wall “PROBLEM”!
WHAT? You want ME to help SOLVE our WORD WALL PROBLEM???
Now our word wall has sight words we use for 6 weeks
( 1 unit of our curriculum).
These words will be in our stories
AND
on our TESTS!
We study them EVERY day ( at Morning Meeting )
AND
we play I SPY with the words wall DAILY!
The kids practice with each other, too!
Partner Practice…yippee!
We use our chromebooks, write on our desks with whiteboard markers, flash cards to take home, and we play LOTS of word games!
My WORD WALL focus’ on sight words.
I teach vocabulary words, but those go on our focus wall for weekly connections.
This year…I am adding personal word walls to their writer’s workshop folders.
They will add words THEY need to use in THEIR writing.
This was last year when we did WAY TOO many
words at one time!
Now…LESS IS MORE
Word Wall by ABC order
Large Word Wall by ABC order
Sight Word games from the Word Wall
Lots of games to practice our “words”.
I have some games and products
to help with WORD WALLS.
Check them out!
So to Conclude…
When putting up word walls, fewer WORDS at one time is BEST!
Teach to MASTERY! Review! Practice! Be consistent!
PINTEREST HAS A MULTITUDE of resources to help.
I found these:
222 SIGHT WORDS from 1stgradefireworks
Here are MORE ways to help your students learn to READ
- Balanced Literacy
- Reading Workshop
- Prepare Those Kindergartners
- Routines
- Primary Teachers are QUIRKY?
I hope this helps your students become BETTER readers and writers!
Leave me a comment. How are things going? Anything I can do to help? 🙂
Wendy 1stgradefireworks
This was very helpful! I’ve bern thinking about how I want to change my word wall up for next year. Great advice!
Great information! I have done my word wall so many times. Thank you for sharing your experience. It will make my life easier.
Me too! It’s always a work in progress. For student mastery…I’m going for LESS IS MORE! 🙂
As a therapist I see some amazing word walls in classrooms! They really benefit the students.