Interactive Word Walls

I've struggled with Word Walls for some time now.

To be honest, I completely understand the pedagogy behind them and love the idea of them ... but they just don't always work for me.  I have a hard time keeping up with them, taking the time to build them in class, and just seem to spend so much time making them pretty but not enough time making them work.  I've been wanting a Math Word Wall since I started teaching, but have never gotten to it.

Until, that is, I realized what the problem with a Math Word Wall is.  In Math, we use a lot of technical terms.  I don't baby it down or fancy it up, because there's enough lingo for the kids to grasp as it is.  What happens when a child mixes up perimeter and area?  What if they know how the word dimension works in a sentence, but they really aren't sure what it means in a question?  Just because they can spell it, doesn't mean they know it.

This is where I've made some changes to this whole word wall system:

1) The words are decided on by the class.  For example, if I say, "Okay class, today's problem involves numbers increasing," and one kid says, "Hey, that's a good math word, let's put it up!" (that happened today, by the way), then I will.  It takes me a whole minute to pull out the paper (that is pre-cut and ready to go) and write the word.

2) The words are on the front, but the definition is on the back.  It's an interactive Word Wall.

3) They words can come down.  They hang with one of those circular clips that you often see in Gr. 1 rooms with sight words.

4) The students are in charge.  They decide when to go and take down the word as a reference.  It gets them up and moving, they can take the word with them if they need it, and it's about meaning versus spelling.  They put them back, on the correct hook, and we can rearrange them as needed.  The kids sometimes mention them during a lesson: "Wait - what's a dimension again?  Can we get the word from the Word Wall?"


This is one way that I am trying to increase their vocabulary and an enriched understanding of the language of math, rather than a surface understanding of a word that they'll temporarily remember, until the test.