The Magic of Word Walls

I’ll be the first to admit that when I started teaching Kindergarten I wasn’t exactly sure how to effectively use my word wall. I knew I wanted to start the year with my students’ names and pictures, but after that I really didn’t know what to do. I had seen some red flag word walls before – teachers who start the year with every single word on the word wall or teachers who end the year with four words on the word wall or primary teachers with words like ‘measurement’ or ‘weather’ on their word wall. Of course, with the huge push for math word walls and science word walls it is easy to see how confusing a simple literacy word wall can be.

Eventually I found that by thinking about my word wall in a similar way to how I thought about my shared reading selections helped me know which words to focus on and place on the word wall. I tried to purposefully select words that were slightly above the independent level of the average student in my class. This supported most students within their ZPD, with my lower students requiring a little more help (color, peer support) and my higher students being provided with a personal or content word wall to help extend and expand their own writing skills.

I also learned the hard way that just sticking words on the word wall does not actually help students learn. During my writing mini-lessons, interactive writing, shared writing, or writing conferencing I constantly had to remind myself to use simple think alouds, such as “Hmmm. I want to write the word “can.” Where could I look to find how to spell that word?” But I was amazed at how quickly the students started modeling their own thinking after me and the word wall suddenly became an active teaching tool and resource instead of a static word display (although a pretty static word display!).

One of my favorite changes to my word wall recently has been the effort to make it interactive. I first heard about interactive word walls a few years ago and LOVED the idea. It seemed the perfect extension of the “think-alouds” I mentioned above and was a way to actively engage students in the use of the word wall. Furthermore I could actually monitor how, when, and who was using the word wall to support their work. Of course, after I remade all my words so they could be removed from the word wall for students to grab and take to their seat for spelling support, I found a problem. Once a student took a word off the word wall to spell, it was no longer there for other students to reference. Hmmm.

So I rethought how my word wall could still be interactive, but practical too. Eventually I came up with this idea. My actual word wall stayed the same with the high frequency and sight words being typed on colored paper, laminated, cut out, and placed on the word wall. This ensured at least one copy of the word was always available for students to see. Then I made several additional copies of each word (copied on the same color paper). At the bottom of each letter’s area, I placed a card pocket (like libraries used to use for book cards). I wrote the corresponding letter on the card and then put the extra copies in the pocket when the word was placed on the word wall. That way when students came to the word wall they found the word they were looking for and then if they wanted to take the word back to their seat, they could match the word spelling and paper color to quickly find the same word in the pocket.   

Today I started looking for other ways that teachers have made their word walls interactive. One idea I saw was to place a basket of paper strips and markers by the word wall. When students come to the word wall to find their word, they can then write the word on a slip of paper and take it back to their seat. I liked this idea because that way the student is actually practicing writing the word twice. For younger kids I have noticed that copying can sometimes be a problem as their eyes can have trouble focusing and refocusing between near and far vision, but I think that with enough modeling and practice and as long as the word wall wasn’t too high or far away this could work really well.