Word walls can do so much more than just be a nice display! This is a lesson I wish I could give my younger teaching self. Over my career I have struggled with word walls in general. But since I started teaching in a high ESL population, I’ve realized that a good word wall can be the most important visual cue in the classroom. After researching and delving into this task, I can sum up my positive experience with these five tips.
Before we get into everything, you should download the word wall freebie I’ve created that go along with this blog post. It’s a complete word wall for parts of speech. All of the materials are made to be printed in black and white, so you can get started on this {cute} word wall in no time!
Just fill in the boxes below and your FREE DOWNLOAD will be sent to your e-mail right away. Then come on back to read the rest of this post to get started on the best way to use a word wall.
Post words as you use them: In years past, I have put up all the words on the word wall ahead of time so that they could be in alphabetical order and my students can find the word alphabetically. People who are way more of an expert in this subject have suggested forgetting all about alphabetical order and instead replacing that with the order in which you are teaching the words. I tried it this year and LOVE IT! As you’ll see below, I keep a limited number of words up at one time so they are not sorting through tons of words to find the one they need.
Each day, I post the words I am introducing in their own special spot near my teaching area. I only add these words to our main word wall when the students have a pretty good grasp on them and I am ready to introduce some new words.
I suggest forgetting all about alphabetizing and instead organizing a word wall by unit. My huge stack of word wall words are color coded according to the math strand they are most closely aligned to. This makes it a breeze to gather the cards I need before starting my unit. Of course, I don’t post a word until I have introduced it to the class. But I do keep that stack of words easily accessible throughout the unit.
Before my lesson, I try to be mindful of the words I want to emphasize throughout my lesson. I also encourage my students to use the words and I have a lot of praise when they use them correctly.
We are using interactive math notebooks this year and we simply put a tab in the notebook for vocabulary. Each student has their own visual dictionary of words that they can refer to! I always give them a definition to paste in their notebook but I also require them to create their own illustration or example of the definition to be included. If you don’t use interactive math notebooks, then you might consider making a individual student vocabulary notebooks, especially if you have ESL/ELL learners in your class.
My students LOVE to play “Guess the Word” as an end of unit activity. Sometimes I say “I am thinking of a word that means…”. Sometimes I draw a picture and point to something and they must guess the word. You can even let a student take a turn as the leader of the activity. Lots of fun and lots of learning! A word wall is so much more than a visual display! If you have good words, then these words have deep meaning that can only increase the depth of understanding of your students. We need all the tools we can get to help our students succeed mathematically and a word wall is a great tool for this!
If you are looking to dive in with word walls, you may be interested in what I have already created:
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