A word wall is an organized collection of large print words on the classroom wall. A word wall helps to create a print rich environment for students, and can be a wonderful tool that is designed to promote group learning.
The Purpose Behind Word Walls
Word walls serve many purposes in the classroom. On the very basic level they support vocabulary development as students are exposed to many new words. Teachers who use word walls as an instructional tool can also see improvement in student reading comprehension and writing skills. Because the words are displayed all the time, the word wall can help increase independence in reading and writing as well as support student learning of high frequency words.
Types of Word Walls
There are many types of word walls that teachers can use in their classrooms. These include:
- General Word Wall – Teachers can include any words that are helpful in the classroom including high frequency words, subject specific words and more.
- High Frequency Word Wall – This would include any frequently used words including the words "the," "and," "at," "over," "because" and more.
- Vocabulary Word Wall – This would focus specifically on vocabulary words that the teacher wants the students to learn throughout the school year.
- Common patterns Word Wall – This is a good focus for younger classes who are still focused on learning phonetic patterns in words.
- Content Word Wall – These are best utilized by content teachers but can be done in the classroom as well. For example, a music teacher would have words relating to the musical content. A regular classroom teacher might focus on science or social studies with the content word wall.
- Thematic Word Wall – This would be a word wall that focuses on the season or a specific book or holiday.
- Genre Word Wall – This word wall focuses on words relating to a specific genre such as poetry, plays or non-fiction.
- Personal Word Wall – These are great for special education students who have a specific set of objectives or vocabulary words to focus on. They will be kept on a smaller piece of paper and kept on the student's desk or in a notebook the student has access to.
- Word Study Word Wall – This word wall will focus on prefixes, suffixes, verbs, adverbs, contractions and more.
- Million Dollar Word Wall - This word wall focuses on substitutes for overused words. For example, Nice: agreeable, delightful, fantastic, charming, pleasant, affable and more.
Having a word wall is an excellent tool for teaching new words and concepts to students on a daily basis. In fact, it is a good idea for teachers to implement more than one word wall in the classroom if the opportunity to presents itself.
Learn how to make a word wall interactive on a daily basis.
Check out a number of other bulletin board ideas that can help students learn in the classroom.
More Word Wall Information.
Jennifer Wagaman - Jennifer is a mother of 2 and has both public, private and administrative experience in the education field.
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