Let’s look at Word Walls for interactive learning developing comprehension both in language arts and in curricular content. Robert J. Marzano in his book, Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement, offers six steps to effective vocabulary instruction:
- The teacher explains a new word, going beyond reciting its definition
- Students restate or explain the new word in their own words
- Students create a nonlinguistic representation of the word
- Students engage in activities to deepen their knowledge of the new word
- Students discuss the new word
- Students play games to review new vocabulary
This works! Check out Georgia Scurletis Wordshop on ThinkMap. And, you can use it with the Step Up To Writing program and with your classroom Word Walls. Certainly the primary grades make good use of Word Walls for developing sight words and patterns in word families. But, is it time your Word Wall becomes a tool, not just a decoration? The Word Wall though can be effectively used for content vocabulary. In the International Reading Association‘s bimonthly membership magazine Reading Today (Vol. 29. No. 4) Katherine Hilden Clouse and Jennifer Jones Powell of Radford University advocate using the Word Wall “strategically and effectively.” Here are their suggestions:
Primary Classrooms:
- When organizing the Word Wall based on sight words word families, beside each sight word placed a red dot indicating to students that it is an important word used in reading and writing but can’t be “sounded out”
- Start with high utility word families which equip students with patterns that can be applied to new words
- Here’s some Word Wall Activities from Teaching First and Scholastic
- And, interactive word wall ideas
Upper Elementary:
- Focus on content words
- Categorize words might be color coded based on the content area in which the words are predominantly found
- Here’s some content word walls (math, social studies, science)
Use and model the displayed words:
- Teacher instruction, to be effective, must be direct and systematic
- Use the word wall during classroom down time
- Use the word wall during reading and writing instructions
- Play with words rather than drill and kill students with word lists
- Try word banks
Build a conceptual base