Word Walls

What is on your walls?  At the beginning of the school year, I have nothing on my walls, with two exceptions.  I have the district mandated ABC chart as well as our calendar wall for Morning Meeting.  Other than those two things, I have bare walls.

On the first day of school, we start several projects.  These projects, when complete, will be used as tools during our school day.

Sight Word Wall	Color Word Wall	Number Word Wall	Shape Word Wall
Picture to Come...!			Picture to Come...!

These "word walls" are typically also "wall stories" that can be utilized during Read Around the Room and Write Around the Room times.

Sometimes our Word Wall is tied to a literature read aloud.  Sometimes it's not.  They are always created by students though!  I've always enjoyed thinking of a "new" way to do a color and number word wall each year.  The students are connected with this project and are more apt to refer to our color and number word wall now that they've invested so much time and effort in creating it.  Creating our classroom environmental print (student-generated) this way makes more sense to me than buying store bought posters and wall art.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Color and Number Word Wall

Based on T.L.C. Style Art.

I decided to create a dual word wall that focus on both numbers and colors for the 2005-2006 school year.  Because my kinders were also working on shapes, I wanted to incorporate "TLC-style" art projects.  

 

 

Color Word Wall

Based on Jane Cabrera's book Cat's Colors.

   

Before creating our color word wall "book" we read the book Cat's Colors and then created a class book using 12x18 size construction for the background.  The children then worked in teams to draw an object to depict each color (using black permanent markers).  We then used various art supplies (rocks, glitter, colored sand, yarn, paint, feathers, beads, puff balls, etc, to decorate the objects.  It was a fun project!  The children enjoyed "reading it" during Read-Around-The-Room. 

Number Word Wall

Based on Donald Crew's book Ten Black Dots.

  

We read the book Ten Black Dots and then created a class book using 12x18 size construction paper (black - - for the background).  The children then choose a number and we made a predictable chart, where students shared their sentence for the story:  "_____ black dots for _________________."    We received many good comments about our wall story (number line).  I wish I had better pictures of this!  I only found ONE picture, but it was of our art teacher, so I had to cut out the parts of the number wall that could be seen.  They are blurry, but you get the gist.  I hope!  :o)

Color Word Wall

Based on Donald Crew's book Freight Train.

 

We read the book Freight Train by Donald Crews, and then created our own "Colors Train."  Each box car depicts a color and houses a variety of objects that are "that" color.  Students were asked to bring things from home.  We also searched the classroom for items of various colors.  

Sight Word Wall

At our school, in Kindergarten, students are to learn 20 "star words" by the end of the school year.  Typically students are able to learn and retain knowledge (instant recall, spelling) of the majority of all 20 words and a few more by the time report cards are sent out in November.  In my classroom, students are challenged to learn additional sight words.  When they get to 1st grade, the sky's the limit as to how many they will learn.  They are tested on 50 sight words, but when I taught 1st grade a couple of years ago at my school, I challenged my students to learn the first 150 sight words on the Dolch sight word list.  Many went beyond the initial 150.  

Students learn sight words through various activities.  We look for sight words during Shared Reading, Morning Message, Guided Reading, etc.  We work with sight words during Literacy Corner (center) time.  Sight words can also be worked on during the "Word Wall Routine" and other games and activities (#1) (#2) (#3).  I'd also highly recommend "The School Bell's Dolch List" site for independent student practice and progress tracking.

I plan on taking a picture of our word wall this year.  I don't have one right now -- sorry!  For our word wall words, I printed them on blank sentence strip type paper using a laser printer.  I then laminated the words.  I have well over 150 words that are laminated.  I only use a fraction of these for Kindergarten, but used them all for 1st grade.  Words are not placed on the Sight Word Wall until they are introduced.  Words are introduced for the first time during or after a shared reading selection that contains the word.  We then make a big deal of adding it to our Sight Word Wall.  Our words are attached to the wall using Velcro because the wall is carpeted (don't ask...!).  

I generally keep the words up all year.  Although recently, I've begun to take down our "no excuse" words.  "No Excuses" Words are those which students are expected to spell correctly in all of their everyday writing.