Word walls…if you don’t teach elementary grades, stay with me! Yes, I firmly believe ANY middle or high school classroom should have a word wall. You don’t have to call it a word wall, but regardless, your students need to have this invaluable resource they can refer to throughout the school year. It’s a non-negotiable. There is a LOT of content-specific words in the curriculum, and it can be extremely difficult for students to learn all these new terms. The high school and middle school word wall cards I use have the term, a kid-friendly definition, and a colorful visual representation to help students make connections as well as learn the definition.
In this post, I am not going to go through the research that supports having a word wall. You can easily Google that. If you are reading this post, it’s because you want to use a word wall and are looking for tips. So THAT is what I am going to include. Oh, and I am going to include a way for you to download a FREE word wall sample pack, so keep reading 🙂
High School & Middle School Word Walls – Tip #1
High School & Middle School Word Walls – Tip #2
Ideas High School & Middle School Word Walls
I teach social studies, so I wanted to have some fun with the headers for each letter. I have to teach about specific regions of the world, so I found countries within those regions and used the flags for the headers. I don’t tell my students what the country flag is. They have to figure it out. They actually really enjoy this challenge! Below I talk about how I used a word wall when I taught ELA, so for that subject I used Greek Gods and Goddesses for the letter headers because my word wall consisted of affixes and roots. You can be as creative as you want, and it will make your high school or middle school word walls more appealing to your students! You can check out all the social studies word wall packs I have available.
When I taught ELA, I had a Greek and Latin roots/affixes word wall. There are SO many students are responsible for learning, and I found that they were forgetting already learned ones. I created a word wall specifically for students to refer to all year long. I put this word wall on a bulletin board. During the year, students would write words that contained a specific root/affix on a notecard and then tack them onto the board under the word wall card. Students were on the lookout for roots/affixes without me having to ask! You can also use this word wall during science because several vocabulary terms have these roots/affixes. My students were referring to my word wall to remember key science terms! You can see this word wall by clicking {HERE}.
I am going to write another blog post that gives ideas of vocabulary activities you can use with your key terms, but I wanted to keep this post short and sweet. I just wanted to give you tips on how you can use high school or middle school word walls effectively in your classroom. If you are interested in seeing the social studies word walls I have available, I have several available in my store.
If you aren’t ready to commit to a complete word wall yet, you can download a FREE sample word wall and see how you like it!
If you have any questions about how to set up your high school or middle school word walls, please let me know! I also have another blog post with even more tips for setting up your middle school or high school classroom.
This is so helpful and wonderful. Thank you! I’m teaching social studies for the first time (and middle school for the first time) and this is just what I needed, Your creative headers are the best.
-Mackenzie
You are welcome! I am glad you are finding them helpful!
This is great. Thank you. Can’t wait to use it with my Speech and Language students!