Word Walls are organized displays of key vocabulary words that are used continually by the students during a variety of academic activities.
What are the benefits of having a Word Wall?
Research shows that direct vocabulary instruction has an impressive track record of improving students’ background knowledge and the comprehension of academic content by 33 percent (Marzzano, R.J.) when vocabulary instruction focuses on specific words important to the content students are studying versus words from high- frequency lists.
Word walls serve multiple purposes:
a. provide a visual reference for students;
b. support the learning of key vocabulary and subject specific terminology;
c. promote independence in writing activities;
d. provide scaffolding in core subject areas like ELA, as well as Math, Social Studies, Science, etc;
e. provide a model for high-frequency words.
Types of Word Walls
Traditional: words are written on paper or card stock and displayed on a dedicated wall by subject, unit of study, part of speech, or in alphabetical order.
Non-traditional: words are displayed on a dedicated white board, written in a vocabulary journal or composition notebook, on students desks, on the walls of privacy folders or taped to writing folders. Portable word walls help students who spend their day both in the regular and in the special education setting.
Differentiation: (1) words accompanied by pictures or photographs for visual learners and emergent readers; (2) words accompanied by definitions.
How to build a Word Wall?
Step 1: Decide what type of Word Wall you want in your classroom. Find the space in your room, think how much the Word Wall could grow by the end of the unit/year, and plan accordingly. If you opt for a traditional Word Wall make sure you leave enough blank space for future additions so you won’t have to reorganize in the middle of the year.
Step 2: Build the Word Wall and display the words. Using vocabulary building strategies before beginning to teach a unit or study a text, introduce the new words. Students can be asked to come up with graphic representations of the words. Words should be added gradually, and should not exceed 5-7 words per week in elementary grades.
Step 3: Add words to the Word Wall on a regular basis. In order to avoid having a static traditional wall, you can (1) replace the words that were mastered by the students with new ones, (2) reference the Word Wall often, so students get into the habit of checking it too, (3) incorporate Word Wall activities into daily activities like spelling the words, reading and clapping, pointing with laser pointers, chanting, snapping fingers, finger tracing in the air, playing guessing or spying games, etc. Incorporating a lot of movement into the Word Wall activities will help your students improve their retaining skills.
Tips
* For traditional Word Walls, words should be printed in clear, large, legible fonts, most commonly in black, on colored card stock or on white paper that can be mounted on colored card stock. For non-traditional ones, same legibility rules apply at different font sizes. Trendy fonts don’t go well in special education with struggling readers, nor does small print.
* Words should be accessible by being displayed in a place where students can see them from different seating areas, or reach them and take them to their seats for quick reference. Finding words on the Word Wall could be challenging for special needs students. Consider organizing the wall by sounds, and investing in laser pointers for easy reference especially if you are across the room or the words are up higher on the wall. Some students with special needs have a difficult time copying words from the Word Wall, so they need to be able to move closer to the Word Wall or take the word to their desk. If the words are not accessible, the Word Wall loses its efficacy. To allow for more interaction and portability, consider displaying words using using magnetic strips, velcro dots, clothes pins, etc.
* Word Walls in special education classrooms can be beneficial, as well as distractible. If you have a lot of visuals on display on the classroom walls, and several students who struggle with ADD, you may want to reconsider putting up a traditional Word Wall and limit the amount of stimuli and visual distractions. A variation like a personal word wall taped on the back of a writing binder or housed inside a student’s desk might be a far less distracting alternative.
* Word Walls offer great scaffolding to students with learning disabilities, as well as ELL students. To support the needs of these two categories of students, Word Walls can be organized around a number of concepts like grammar, writing structures, conversational phrases, etc.
* When words are added to the Word Wall continuously, and they remain on display for the entire year, students can visualize their progress by counting the number of words on the wall.
In special education, personal word walls are great for differentiating content especially in a multi-grade setting. They can be stored in students’ desks or mounted on their writing binders.
