There is nothing like prepping your classroom for a new school year. All the anticipation. All the ideas. All the time and money spent. It is ALL worth it!!!!! I am sure I am not alone when I say that there are A LOT of things that I want to tweak or improve this year. One of those happens to be sight words.
I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to best display our sight words so that my students have accessibility to it and are able to see it without standing up and walking up to it all day. Searching for ideas, I obviously went to Pinterest (can I get an Amen?!) I searched word wall ideas and came across Run! Miss Nelson's Got the Camera! blog! I went through it and saw the idea of a portable word wall and instantly fell in love.
For starters, it would free up a bulletin board. With all of the things that need to be displayed in the room, saving bulletin space is AMAZING!! I also loved the fact that I could place it somewhere easy for students to grab. They can walk right up to it and select the letter that they need. It will save time and chaos because students will not have to stand, get a clipboard, and squint to read the words a foot above their little head (or is it just my kids..??).
I started by measuring the space that I was going to use! This is important because you want to make sure you have enough space in between the clips and that they can be evenly displayed (13 on top, 13 on bottom-my inner OCD coming out). I *THOUGHT* I knew what size to make the word wall cards from that measurement and started to make the cards. I did the front card (the letters of the alphabet) in one color (black). I made our sight word card another color (white). I am going to add color words on red paper, number words on orange paper, and word families on different paper. I am hoping that this will make it easier for my students to flip to the correct category to find the words they are looking for!
I sorted them in their alphabet order and then put them in the order that that they appear throughout our quarters. I hole-punched the cards in the corner and simply put a binder ring on them!!
*Note* We have color and number words in our sight words as well. I have chosen to put them in another section in addition to the sight word section because I want my students to be able to find the word quickly and efficiently.
Here is a picture of them hung up! Notice that I made my word cards a little bigger than I should have! I could trim them, but then the border will be gone so I am going to let this way settle in for a bit!!
Here are some close ups of the letter cards!
I am SO excited to use this portable word wall this year! I am truly hoping that my students will utilize it more and that it will play an essential role in their fluency!!!
Part two will be a follow up :)
What do you do for your word walls??? Leave a comment below!!!
Wow! This is a cool idea that I haven't seen done before! I am anxious to see how it works!
ReplyDeleteI do a regular bulletin board for my word wall, but we put up our words as we learn them. I also have lists of the sight words in the order they're introduced in their writing folders. We also do Name of the Day for the first few weeks of school, focusing on a particular student every day. We add their names to the Word Wall when they are Name of the Day.
Carlee Van Ness
The Kindergarten Press