

Allow students to create their own word wall cards in clear, and bold print. Make your word wall student-centered and generated where possible. Let children know that they can contribute to the word wall. Make the learning of your vocabulary rich, deep, and extended with word wall games and activities Word walls should be accessed daily, and students should use the word wall autonomously as one strategy to build fluency and comprehension. How do you ensure that your vocabulary instruction supports this higher level of learning? Give students lots of opportunities to interact with words, for example focus on meaning with contextual references to texts, and real-life. Graves (2007) suggests that vocabulary instruction is most effective when it is rich, deep, and extended. Is it enough to use your word wall as a ready reference? Thus assisting their fluency and comprehension skills. Another aim (which lends itself to the first aim above) for your word wall should be to help students see spelling patterns in words to aid their phonics and spelling skills. This is more achievable with a growing word wall, that can be built upon gradually and accompanied with games and activities (stay with me, 18 ideas are coming) to promote comprehension, and retention.Īn essential part of fluency and comprehension is phonics. Therefore, the aim of a word wall in part is to promote the development of both fluency and comprehension. More over, able readers achieve fluency as they recognize words with speed and build upon them to aid in comprehension (Pumfrey & Elliott, 1990). One way to build fluency and comprehensionĪccording to Chard & Pikulski, 2005, reading fluency is the ability to read orally with speed and efficiency, including word recognition, decoding, and comprehension. I then discovered that introducing up to five words a week for my firsties was more meaningful, and promoted deeper learning.
#Free wordwall template full
Many times, my students were overwhelmed with a whole wall full of words. I wanted my students to use the word wall to increase their vocabulary, and reading fluency skills. This way was just too overwhelming and didn’t promote deeper learning for my students. Lots of whom had learning difficulties, and were second language learners. After a few years, I began to understand that this approach wasn’t working for my students. Well don’t get me wrong, I have done this year in, year out. You can check that off your list of 1,001 things you have to do.

It’s nice to have your word wall all set up and ready to go, because then it’s all done.
