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Word Walls. What is a Word Wall?. A Word Wall is an organized collection of words prominently displayed in a classroom Word Walls are interactive tools used to teach reading, writing, and spelling to students
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What is a Word Wall? • A Word Wall is an organized collection of words prominently displayed in a classroom • Word Walls are interactive tools used to teach reading, writing, and spelling to students • Word Walls can be used in numerous ways and adapted to the specific needs of all students • Word Walls typically consist of the most commonly used vocabulary/sight words • Word Walls are designed to promote group learning and be shared by a classroom of children
What is the the purpose of a Word Wall? • Word Walls have many purposes including: • Teaching children to recognize and spell high frequency words • Displaying patterns and relationships amongst words • Helping students build phonemic awareness skills and apply phonemic rules • Providing reference support during reading and writing activities • Fostering independence throughout daily activities
Why use Word Walls? • Word Walls are excellent literacy tools that can be used to: • Support the teaching of important general principles about words and how they work • Foster spelling, reading, and writing • Provide reference support for children during their spelling, reading, and writing • Promote independence on the part of young students as they work with words in writing and reading • Provide a visual map to help children remember connections between words and the characteristics that will help them form categories • Develop a growing core of words that become part of a reading and writing vocabulary
Developing the Word Wall • When creating a Word Wall be sure to: • Be selective; include the most commonly used words in writing and spelling • Match the Word Wall font to the classroom handwriting program • Alphabetize the Word Wall and leave space under each letter so that new words can gradually be added • Use bold, clear print to ensure that students can read all words from anywhere in the room • Highlight or underline those words that will be most helpful in decoding similar words (underline the chunk -ight in the word night to help children read words such as fright, sight, bright)
Types of Word Walls • Word Walls can be used to support any learning in the classroom. Different types of Word Walls include: • High Frequency Word Wall • Name Word Wall • Chunking Word Wall • Help Word Wall • Content Area and Theme Word Walls • Parts of Speech Word Walls • *Word Walls can be adapted for use at any grade level*
Incorporating the Word Wall • To incorporate the Word Wall into daily classroom use: • Introduce only a few words at a time (for example, 5 new words per week) • Emphasize the correct spelling of Word Wall words in all writing activities • Review Word Wall words regularly and point to them throughout the day during a variety of literacy activities • Do a variety of review activities to provide enough practice so that words are read and spelled instantly and automatically • Take advantage of using the Word Wall as an informal assessment tool