Word Wall

This is no ordinary word wall. 

This is an interactive word wall!

An interactive word wall is meant to be used as a daily reading and writing tool. Students need to be comfortable using this wall as a tool, therefore, it is not intended to sit in the background of your classroom as a bulletin board.

At the beginning of the year, my students interact with this word wall every day! Yes, EVERY DAY! One word is added to the word wall 3 to 4 days a week.

My students begin each word wall activity by reading the letters and words as I point. At first, we read the word wall in order but as the year goes on, I begin at different letters. The students are prompted to follow the pointer and be responsible for their own learning. 

"Your eyes need to look at the word in order to learn how to read and write the word on your own."

Next, I introduce a new word. We begin by analyzing the word and pay particular attention to what the word starts with, ends with, and what they see in the middle. I encourage the students to use accurate language - "It starts with..., It ends with..., I see a chunk I know..., etc." We talk about how sight words don't always follow our word family rules and that our sight words are words that are most commonly found in books. After the students have taken turns telling me what they notice about the word, I tell them the word and they tell me where to place it on the word wall and explain why.

We then pair share a sentence with our new word wall word. I take one of those sentences and model how to write it in a sentence. In the beginning of the year I model spaces, correct punctuation, letter formation, and starting on the left side. As the year progresses, I begin to make mistakes and have the students come up to the board to correct my mistakes.

Now it is their turn to use the new word. Each student has a word wall journal or word wall book. The students record the new word at the top of the journal, record the date, and write a sentence with the new word.

Kindergarten - The word wall book pages are blank: no lines! This is time for the students to focus solely on imaginative writing with no worry about staying in the lines or forming letters correctly. As the year progresses, I begin to add correct lower case letter formation when I model writing and when I walk around to conference with students about their sentence.

First Grade - The word wall book pages have writing lines and a space to draw a picture. Letter formation and extending their ideas is encouraged more frequently.

Second Grade - The word wall book pages have writing lines and a space to draw a picture. Sentence structure, letter formation, using more sophisticated punctuation and proper story telling structure (short story) is encouraged more frequently.

At the kindergarten level - 

Most students will begin with pictures because they are not comfortable writing sentences yet. I have those students draw a picture to match the sentence they are thinking of and write the sight word next to the picture. I take this writing time to meet with each of my students and they read their sentence to me, touching to each word as they read. At this time, I write their sentence off to the side so their picture remains a product from them and not me. I do this for all the students who are at the beginning stages of writing. 

As students progress and become more comfortable with kid-spelling (inventive spelling), you will begin to see students writing more and taking more chances with their writing.

While I'm walking around and conferencing with each student, I never correct their mistakes when they read their sentence to me. I want each student to be proud of their work no matter what. This encourages the students to take more chances with kid-spelling. As I'm walking around, I praise good mechanics as I see them in action. This encourages the other students to go back and check for spaces or punctuation marks.

Wordo

Students fill the board with words from the Word Wall. We play blackout style!

I have a Word Jar and I every word that is added to our word wall also goes into our word jar. Once the student's boards are filled up, I begin calling words. The rules of the game are simple: Students win by spelling all the words on their boards correctly with no help, they need to be able to read the words on their own, they need to be able to locate the words on their board on their own as well.

Speed Read Activity

This activity was adapted from another teacher's blog (unsure who). I used the Fry's 300 list and differentiated each list. The third list is differentiated for my higher readers.