Why Word Wall when you can Word Web

With a new job comes new space. In my middle school classroom, I had been thinking for days and weeks about how to get the walls looking more interesting but not little kiddish. I also was finding that in public school, there are very few speech therapy students who would not benefit from extra vocabulary instruction. Vocabulary is so so essential and HUGE in school! What better way to approach a poor vocabulary than by organizing it and building from there! By this I mean, new words need old concepts and words to relate to in order to be efficiently stored for easy access.

At the same time, everyone (teachers) are talking about word walls all the time. New to me, as I don't remember seeing them when I was in school and it's not a speech thing, somehow. Word walls are great for exposure, but my kids need more than exposure. They need connections. And so, the Word Wall Web was born.

I decided to start a new monthly tradition, with just washi tape/paper, painter's tape, ribbon, and a sharpie. For March, I put the word, "luck" on Washi paper and stuck it in the middle of the wall. When kids came to see me, I encouraged them to tell me what words they think of when they see the other words that previous groups added to the web. This activity was so useful, and so motivating for the students. Kids came into my room with words they had thought of over the week that they want added. I used this activity to have students think of synonyms, use vocabulary in definitions and sentences, and explain what they thought other students were thinking of when they added new words to the web. March's web did not get as huge as it could have. The kids wanted to focus on it every time, but we can't just do word webs! So we will try to get into the habit of adding a word at the beginning of the session and moving on.

I took this web down yesterday, and started a new web, with a focus on spring and biology! This web was fun and all, but it's time to up the ante with curricular vocabulary! I'll post it here at the end of the month!!