Meaningful Word Walls
Using Childrens Names and Familiar Sound-Prompt Pictures (Virtual Tour)
Stage of Literacy Development:
Stage 1: Beginning LiteracyStage 2: Consolidation / Fluency
Ages:
3-8
Grade Range:
PreK K 1st 2ndFood Groups:
Primary:
Classroom Tips
Secondary:
Concepts of Print, Motivation for Literacy
Transcript
This is our classroom Word Wall. And the first thing that goes on the Word Wall are the children's names, and I've color coded them for the morning and afternoon classes. And after that we have shared writing daily and shared reading daily, and from those exercises we take our high frequency words and put them on the Word Wall as well. A book I like to use, called Alphabet at the Store, has lots of pictures of everyday items that the children are familiar with, and so we practice our letter names and our letter sounds. When I was making my letter cards for the Word Wall, I used the same pictures that are in the book, and I just went and used Clip Art from the computer for the pictures.
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 Meaningful Word Walls: Using Childrens Names and Familiar Sound-Prompt Pictures (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:
- Color-code the names of students and display them on the word wall.
- 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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StarFall Center: Learning and Applying Letter-Sounds in Kindergarten (Virtual Tour)
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