Word Walls- not just for K and 1st graders!

 I can remember in middle school one of my teachers pulling me aside and telling me, "You might just want to type everything that is due and then you can spell check it."

Yes, my ideas were always on par, but my spelling  was atrocious. 

Adeline seems to be following in her mama's footsteps. It is a struggle. She is making progress, but now she has to type answers and that seems to throw things off even more with her spelling. 

If your child is like mine, then you how frustrating it can be...for both you and them! And as a parent supervising virtual learning, you want to supervise their word quality without just being their editor and fixing the spelling yourself. It is a hard balance, but to try to make your child more independent, here is a quick tip

Word Walls:

Have your student make content based word wall in the front of their units. For instance, Adeline is studying poetry in reading. We came up with a few words that she had been learning that she is going to need to use again and again in reading responses to make a word wall for her to use. Note, this is not supposed to support understanding of the meaning of the word- it's just a quick visual for her to use when she needs to make sure she is spelling those word correctly. That is why I would start the unit by having a fresh page dedicated to this in their binder or subject notebook. Teachers, this would be great for your students to support them at the beginning of each content based unit- we know how difficult it is to make an actual word wall for each subject and each topic under each subject- there is no space on the walls for that BUT this is still an important resource for students to be able to use. So this tip takes this important strategy and keeps it in a handy place for students. Then, as a review through the unit, they can revisit their word wall and make sure for each word, they can explain what it means as a quick check for understanding. :) 

Adeline wanted to write her words on her word wall. Note, if you do that, you might want to double check their word. She had spelled imagery wrong at first and I had to go back and correct it (you can see the squeezed in e to her word). If Adeline spells a word wrong that is on this list on an assignment, I will tell her that she needs to go back and use her resources to correctly spell these words. If it is a word not on the word wall, then we will talk about it. 

For K-1, teachers know how important this strategy is! Edmund has been so frustrated with writing. Now that he is picking up sight words, I made him a quick word wall on a sheet of paper. Later, we might make a sight word dictionary, but for now this suffices. It helps him to be less frustrated to have these words to "anchor" his writing and then he can work on stretching out his other words. It allows them to be more successful by having these scaffolds in place.  

As a parent supervising virtual learning, I am trying to keep frustration levels at a minimum. By using this easy strategy, it can lower frustration, but also teach students to use their resources to be more independent. :)