Ideas for word walls

Blogging here for my summer Setting Up series! I am having so much fun collecting ideas and sharing them with you. Today, we are going to chat about classroom word walls. There are many different options for word walls, but the vast majority of primary classrooms use word walls for sight words and high-frequency words. I will show a few ideas for math word walls and even content words. I hope you find some great ideas today!

If anyone is like me, setting up the word wall is MUCH easier than keeping up with the word wall throughout the year. I can help you with the first part and merely give you the motivation to keep up with it during your busy school year. 😉

World Wall Tips

These three pins are little tips for setting up your word wall.

Scholastic
If you have very limited space in your classroom, this is a wonderful idea. Put your word wall on a ring. Your students will use the word wall as they need, and you save wall space.

Creating Readers and Writers
This idea is fun. Her blog post talks about the importance of using different colors on the classroom word wall to help students differentiate the types of words, such as contractions, sight words, names, and more!

Rainbows Within Reach
This blog post has lots of ideas, just like this one! Click through for inspiration on setting up environmental word walls!

Yeehaw Teaching in Texas
I predict a trip to the Dollar Tree to pick up an index cardholder. What a good idea to hold all the word wall words until they are used!

Setting Up The Wall

Here is the fun part! This is what we are all really excited about. The summer set up. The cute and fun taping, decorating, and measuring. Here are several different ways to assemble your classroom word wall.

Mrs. Pauley’s Kindergarten
Tape on the whiteboard is a new and VERY popular route to go. Such a fantastic idea!

Moore Fun in Kindergarten
I love how this is at the kids’ eye level!

Live Laugh Learn

Teach Two Reach

Teachery Tidbits

Simply the Middle

First Grade Blue Skies
Out of room on your wall? Jennifer suggested putting your word wall on your ceiling!

Flamingo Fabulous

First Grade Fresh

For all of these ideas and MORE,
check out my CLASSROOM WORD WALLS Pinterest board.

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Word Walls: Interactive and Purposeful

We want kids to engage with the word wall. It shouldn’t just be decorative. Giving kids a reason to engage with word walls gives them a purpose for being in the room. Word walls aren’t just posters. They are learning tools and we have to USE them as such.

Here are 10 great ideas for using word walls in a middle school classroom.

1. Personal Word Wall

It’s great to watch students reference their personal word wall. I like to use foldable notes, like the one at the right. Folding notes make the word visible, but not the definition. Kids can then use the notes to quiz themselves. If you don’t use foldables, a worksheet with boxes is fine. Make the boxes large enough so students can add visuals if they learn better this way.

I call our word notes the “mini wo-wa.” The kids like when I make words up, and they are much more likely to use it if it has a silly name. It’s pretty common for me to hear a student suggest a classmate add a word to his “mini wo-wa.”

2. Include Definitions

Word walls work best when definitions are included. They become a huge dictionary that students can refer to when reading and writing. Many teachers think that the definitions don’t have to be included, but experts say they do.

Imagine this. You are eager to learn Greek, so you enroll in a beginner Geek class. In the classroom, Greek words are hanging on a bulletin board. Just the words. There aren’t any illustrations or familiar text to accompany them. The teacher is speaking Greek and expects you to participate, using those Greek words on the board.

The teacher asks for someone to share the name of their skýlos. You think you remember what a skylos is, but you’re not totally sure. Is it your dog? You think so, but you’re not positive. Is it your town? Street? Now you start to sweat, wondering if the teacher will call on you. Luckily, someone else shares that a  skýlos is a dog.

You would have been much more confident participating if you had been able to look over at your life-sized dictionary. And eventually, those definitions will sink in.

3. Refer to the Words

During instruction, use your best Vanna White arm-sweep and refer to the words frequently, so students begin to understand their relevance. Our friends will learn that the words aren’t chosen arbitrarily. Referring to the words also allows kids to make a visual connection between the word and its use.

4. Add Visuals

Assign kids to find or draw pictures that illustrate the word for homework and then add them to the word wall. This ensures that the kids are thinking about the words outside of class. The pictures also add an important visual quality.

5. Use a Concept Wheel

A “concept wheel” is another popular graphic organizer you can use to allow students to build meaning for themselves. Draw a circle on a piece of paper. Divide the circle into four parts. In the first part, “Biff” writes a word he would like to understand better. In the second part, Biff brainstorms a list of words he thinks of when he hears the word in the first box. In the third is the denotation, or formal definition of the word. In the fourth section, Biff paraphrases the definition. On the bottom, Biff writes a sentence in which the word is used correctly. Students learn best when they “construct” meaning of words on their own.

6. Become an Expert

Place students in groups of three or four and assign each student one or two words to become an expert on. You can Jigsaw the activity by allowing the experts to work with experts from other groups, if you’d like. Experts have to determine the best way to teach the rest of the group about the word. They can employ visuals, act it out, provide examples, or play a game. When the experts go back to their original group, they will teach their group all about the word.

7. Create Word Art

For our visual artists, encourage each student to choose a word and then create a visual representation of the meaning of the word. They might even create it using the letters of the word. For example, in the image above, the word “conflict” looks like it’s fighting, the word “impact” is crashing into a wall.

I have found this to be an excellent hands-on way to teach new words to older students. It gives them the spelling and the meaning of the word all at once and helps quicken the transition of the new words into long-term memory. The kids love doing hands-on artwork and seeing what others have created. Each word is created on a half sheet of regular copy paper and by the end of the school year, we have some cool art to add to our word wall.

8. Matchmaking (or as I call it, Wo-Wa Speed Dating)

Each student is given a word and an index card. They write everything they know about their word on the card, definitions, examples, everything. They then rotate, sharing the word card with a partner. Together, the two decided on a commonality or relationship between their words.

Impose a predetermined time limit, so students can move on, but before they do, randomly ask one group to share their findings with the class. If your friends are like mine, they are much more likely to stay on task if there is a chance they will have to be accountable for sharing their findings.

9. Write a Poem

Ask students to write a poem using as many word wall words as possible. Alternatively, task students with creating an extended metaphor poem about one of the words.

10. Word Ad

In this variation of Become an Expert, a group is assigned a word or two to teach the rest of the class. They should begin by brainstorming all possible uses of the word. Then they create a skit in which they “sell” the word to the class.

One of the best word ad skits I’ve seen took place during our study of nonfiction terminology. One group was tasked with creating a sales pitch for the word graphics. To start their presentation, the group read some instructions for assembling a swing set, and when they got to the part about requiring nails, brought out manicure supplies. The class quickly caught on the importance of including visual representations, especially when writing informational text, such as Feature Articles.