Word walls can be as effective in upper grade classrooms as they are in the primary grades. With word walls teachers can help students develop reading and writing vocabularies, enhance content learning, and support struggling readers and English as second language students.
Choosing the Words for the Wall
Nationally known author and Educator, Dr. Anita Archer, speaking to a group of teachers at the Northwest Washington Education Service District [Feb. 2005] on the topic of improving literacy at the secondary level, recommended selecting content words for vocabulary development that students do not know, but that are critical to the understanding of the content, and that will have on-going meaning beyond the immediate topic of study. Vocabulary can come math, science, social studies, literature or the arts, and students can help generate these words from readings, lectures, or research.
Word Walls Should be Interactive and Constantly Changing
As students master a word, it should be retired to a shoe box and newer words added to the wall. The “shoe box” words can be reviewed before cumulative tests, or used to help students make connections between past learning and new topics. Word walls work best when they are interactive, with words that can be easily added, removed or rearranged. Pocket charts, or index cards with peel-and-stick Velcro, or peel-and-stick magnetic strips work well.
Word Wall Activities that Focus on the Content Areas
When a number of words have been added to the word wall, students can work independently or in small groups to:
- Write their own definitions for selected words.
- Create a glossary for the unit of study.
- Compare the common usage of a word with its specific content meaning. For example, axiom, which in common usage means an accepted or self-evident idea, is more concisely defined in geometry as an agreed upon set of ideas used to prove theorems.
- Sort words and write a rationale. For example students might group metamorphic, volcanic, and magma and lava together, then write a paragraph explaining their selection. There is no right or wrong answer, as long as students justify their thinking adequately.
- Create categories and clues for a classroom version of the game show Jeopardy.
Word Wall Activities that Focus on Language Development
Students can work alone or in small groups to:
- Alphabetize a portion of the words, particularly words that begin with the same letter, such as migrate, migration, and mitigate.
- Study the origin or roots of words or common affixes, such as -ology or geo-.
- Generate lists of related words. For example, for ecology, students might list ecological, ecologist, ecologically, eco-tourism, eco-terrorism, and more.
- Generate lists of synonyms for a word. For example, for migrant synonyms could be immigrant, emigrant, transient, traveler.
- Illustrate the meaning of a word.
- Use the word cards as flash cards to learn to spell the words correctly.
- Incorporate words into written reports, poetry, or creative writing.
Word walls are not just for the primary classroom. They can be used across the grades to highlight critical vocabulary, help students use and spell the words correctly, and to provide higher level thinking activities that enhance learning.
