Word Wall Linky Party

Jen R. from The Teacher's Cauldron has a "word wall" in some need of an intervention.               

Join the party(click the picture above and it should take you to the party) and help her and all of us "word wallers" improve on this teaching tool!

Here's my word wall pic from a previous post. I have to admit I don't have a regular routine for using it. It's more of a resource for the students. 

We do play "I Spy" (You know . . . "I'm thinking of a word that __") or I'll give 4 clues and they try to guess the word after each clue.

I'm looking forward to seeing and reading other ideas!

(I don't have wall space so my word wall hangs from the ceiling)

"Not so routine" Routines

Wow - life got in the way the past few weeks and blogging became low priority. But I'm back and hopefully will get blogging into my routine. And speaking of routine . . .


I like routines - they keep you on track and provide some stability in the day to day craziness of the classroom. BUT, I don't like boring! So I've developed some routines that are favorites of my second graders and will share them over the next few days. 


First up . . . Bowling! 
Every Thursday I go bowling during our literacy block and try to knock down as many bowling pins second graders as I can. Each student stands with a white erase board/marker/eraser in hand. I post the 3 or 6 "academic vocabulary" words we are currently working with. Each student chooses a word and writes it on their white board. I randomly choose a bowling card on which I've written the meaning of one of the vocabulary words. I say the meaning of the word - class says what word the meaning matches - all students that wrote that word are "knocked down" and no longer stand. We repeat this for a total of 6 turns. My goal is to try to get all the pins students down. Those that are knocked down still choose and write a word and keep a tally count of how many times their chosen word is picked. The goals of this routine are to practice the vocabulary words and their meanings and to have a little movement (and fun)   involved. The kids ask to do this practically every day - it's definitely one of their faves!


Here are the cards I use (they're very basic). I've laminated mine and then just use dry erase or overhead markers to write on the back.


vocabbowling