We have a word wall in our classroom that we will add to each week. We started with each of the children’s names and this week, we added our first 5 words: I, first, that, two and went. Of course they laughed at the word “I”, but I told them we had to add it because many are spelling it with a lower case i. Each week we will add 5 words. By the end of the year, there will be about 175 words on the wall that they need to know how to spell. These are high frequency words that are common in our reading and writing. Once they go up on the word wall, they must always be spelled correctly and these are the words I check for in all their writing.

Then we have our “Interesting Words” wall. When I read to the kids, I ask them to listen for words they think are interesting or they don’t know the meaning of. We add these to this chart and the students will be encouraged to use them in their writing or when they are talking to each other. A great way for increasing vocabulary!