going to try personal word walls

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Home : 2003 : August : 3

going to try personal word walls
By sj

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to try having students have their own personal word walls. They will each have a folder with brads in the middle for their writing portfolio/work folder. In the brads I am going to
put plastic sleeves. In the sleeves I will put first a page for nouns (I've broken this into people, places, things, and put gifart illustrations for some of the most common, then left lines for students to add their own under that), a second sleeve is for verbs, then one for adjectives/adverbs, and on that lists the 60 prepositions. I'm thinking that kids may not think alphabetically

when they are looking for words, and my think more in terms of what the word means. I also want these word walls to have alternative vocabulary words on them (like several ways to say "said") so that students can use the mini word wall not just for spelling but as a sort of thesaurus as well. I showed the idea to a bunch of 2nd grade teachers, and most of them seemed to think the idea would be a good one. My classroom doesn't really have a wall--there's a whiteboard on one wall, lockers on one, and windows on one, and the 4th one has to be the math bulletin board. I tried paperclipping words to the miniblinds over the windows, but that was a total hassle. The locker doors are metal, but are too much in the line of traffic to survive magnets (the kids destroyed what I had taped on them!), and the whiteboard is really showerboard and not magnetic--and needed as a whiteboard....so I was scrambling for a way to have a word wall without a wall! I like the library pocket idea in the post above. I may try that in addition to the mini personal word walls.