Interactive Word Walls

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Interactive Word Walls
By Julie/KS

I think the more interactive it can be, the better. Here are two ways to ensure that it's interactive:

1. Put about 5 words up each week as you teach the words to the class. (In other words, don't stick all your words
up on the board before the first day of school.) You should be building the word wall with your class.

2. Use a backing that will allow your students to take words off the word wall to write them during writing workshop, etc. and then put them back up after they've written the word. Some kids will have no problem copying the words from the board, other kids will prefer to take

the words back to their seat to write them. You can use magnets or velcro...whatever works.

Word walls should be high frequency words. (Refer to a Fry list or a Dolch list--not sure on the spelling of that.) So if you're studying plants, you wouldn't put words like root or petal on the word wall since those aren't high frequency. You could have a separate board for content vocabulary or seasonal words.

You can purchase a word wall for second grade that should have all (or almost all) of the high frequency words for second grade. I think those are well worth the money.
Hope this helps!