word walls

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Home : 2008 : May : 23

word walls
By AddieJ

It sounds like your kids have lots of other writing helps (and I love the personal dictionaries - I had them all ready this year and never actually used them :( I'll pull them out for my kinders next year - one thing already
finished ;)) I've always had a word wall but this year, I used one long alphabet line along the wall, close to the ceiling and I put the words going down from the letters. For some letters, I had to move them apart to make two columns underneath but with this word wall, I didn't feel that it took up an entire wall. I only put student names and sight words on the word wall. The calendar

is like a word wall because of all the labels and when we have seasonal words or unit words, I'll put them on a bulletin board or in a pocket chart. There's no use (at least I don't see one) in putting the word "pumpkin" on the word wall for the entire year. It just takes up space. And if you use dictionaries, that word can go in those ;)

What does administration say about word walls? My principal said every room HAS TO have a word wall displayed all year long.

I would say that word walls are definately beneficial and worth having but if you have other things in place for the children to use, then maybe it's okay to not have a formal one; maybe try a pocket chart of unit words/spelling words/weekly words, or whatever your need is.

BTW, one thing I love about word walls are all the games you can play with the words. I have a set of index cards hanging close to my word wall and I'll grab them and play a game if we have a few minutes of free time.

I'm not sure if this was helpful - just some thoughts I had...