Word Wall
Expanding Vocabulary in Second Grade (Virtual Tour)
Stage of Literacy Development:
Stage 2: Consolidation / FluencyAges:
7-8
Grade Range:
2ndFood Groups:
Primary:
Spelling & Word Study
Transcript
On Fridays after final dictation, we take the ten words of the week and move them to the word wall. It's nearing the end of first term, and you can see, we've built up quite a collection of words. These words are very important for a number of reasons. One of them, they're high frequency words. The students are using these words in their writing every single day, but some of them are tricky. And like you, and me, sometimes it's difficult to remember how to spell those tricky words. For example, because, the students have difficulty because it doesn't sound the same way it's spelled, so we add a little chant to that just to make it a little bit more fun, and we do: B-E-C-A-U-S-E. It helps them to internalize the sound, and when the words are on the word wall, it's so much easier to play games with them. It's also important to look at how you're going to put the words on the word wall. If you put different colours behind them, it's so much easier for them at a glance, under the letter, to see the different words. It differentiates one from the other. It helps them focus when they're looking for the word, because. These are all different strategies you can use through the week as the students are using the word wall in their daily writing.
Related References
Graded lists of high frequency words have been developed by Fry and Dolch: http://www.k12reader.com/fry-word-list-1000-high-frequency-words/
Activity Objective
The goal of Word Wall: Expanding Vocabulary in Second Grade (Virtual Tour) is to help students to commit irregularly spelled high frequency words to memory and provide opportunities for exposure to and use of a variety of words.
Quick Tips
Additional Comments:
- High frequency words are the words that appear most often in printed material. Direct students' attention to these words during read-alouds and shared readings.
- Discuss the importance of recognizing high frequency words by sight and the direct impact of this recognition to reading fluency.
- The more often students' are exposed to high frequency words the more likely they will be able to commit the spelling of these words to memory.
- Create personal dictionaries and have students add new high frequency words to their dictionaries on a regular basis.
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