Word Walls

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Word Walls
By Karine

There's a wonderful book published by Scholastic called "Word Walls" that really explains what to do. Basically, you can create an alphabet word wall (this will be a good review of kindergarten material for the first graders).
Using nursery rhymes and poems (see anthologies of funny children poems- Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky), you can then ask the students to find any words that begin with the letter(or letters) you have selected to focus on that day. Be sure to emphasize the sound the letter makes. Select other words from the rhyme or poem that don't begin with the target letter and have kids

tell you what's wrong with the word.

You can also start a chunking word wall in which you could give mini-lessons on word families: words that end in -an, -ed, -in. Give each child a set of letters photocopie on cardboard and cut out. Start with the word "tan", and then go through words man, pan, can (the kids work with their set of letters and try to spell the words, be sure to stress the sound each letter makes in a word). Afterwards, select on of the words to be the representative of the word family and put it on the chunking wall under its appropriate heading.