Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Word Walls

One of the things I disliked the most and rebelled against the most in Texas was the word wall we were supposed to have up in our rooms. These were lists of random social studies terms, such as "nullification" and "1776" that were thrown up on the wall willy-nilly and were supposed to somehow magically increase the kids social studies skills. We were never told really how to use them, it was just that they were supposed to cure all our problems. I HATED them and did everything I could to keep from using them. I only put them up when I was being observed and all other times they sat in my desk drawer. Well, in the book study we are doing at school, they talked about word walls, and guess what - we were doing them wrong at my old school. I know, I know, shocking, but true. Word walls are supposed to be words that are commonly used in your classroom, not random vocabulary words from one unit, and one of the suggestions was to use words that are commonly misspelled. So, I think I will have a word wall next year, of words that are often misspelled in the stuff the kids hand in, like "a lot," "they're/their/there," to/two/too," and so on. So here's to word walls - correctly used!!

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