Imagine walking into a room full of words …

Where do you get inspiration for writing?  How do you think of the words you want to use?Imagine a room with word lists hanging all around – not just one “word wall” but words everywhere all over the room.

When I teach writing, I encourage students to not use the same words over and over again (I call these “worn out” or “boring” words). I have very large lists of interesting synonyms for some “boring” words. Students enjoy finding new words to use. Sometimes a student will find one of the words in a book. They get to share that “treasure find” with the class by reading the sentence that contains the word along with a few of the sentences around it. If students use any of the “list words” when they write, they get to use a marker or colored pencil to draw a circle around the word. There are times when students find other words that can be added to the list of synonyms, so we add those words. I guess I try to create “word detectives” in my classroom.

When students find interesting words while reading, they can present those to the class by writing that word on a sentence strip or index card and decorating it. If that new interesting word belongs with a synonym list on the wall, we add it. If the new word doesn’t fit in any of the lists, then we add it to the “look what I found” category.

We also do various activities with these word lists. They are a great “time filler” to use when lining up or transitioning from one activity to another.We can do word sorts based on syllables, vowels, number of letters, plural, prefix/suffix, antonyms. We can also create word webs by brainstorming words that sound the same, have similar parts, start with the same prefix, end with the same suffix, have the same base or root.

At times I hang up all the lists all around the room (the fire marshal does not like that too much). Other times I post lists that are related to what we are reading or studying in other subjects. When words all around the room gets to be too much, we have folders full of synonym lists for students to use. We could also use table tents, pocket charts, or containers to post words, but the huge word lists hanging around the room really capture student attention.

One Comment

• scrabble word lists says:

  April 12, 2012 at 11:08 am

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