I must admit that I have a love-hate relationship with Word Walls.

What’s not to love about how students can use the word walls to assist in writing, and practice reading high frequency words? Nothing! Except how much room they take up. I have one large bulletin board in my classroom for hanging my word wall up on. Between the Dolch list, district word list, reading program list, and vocabulary words there just isn’t room to display all the words unless I make the font so small that it can’t be read.

My solution? A Word Wall in a book!

Every student in my classroom receive one of these word wall books at the start of the year. They are pre-filled with the Dolch sight list up to 3rd grade. Each page has plenty of blank lines for students to add words to throughout the year.

Any time a student asks me to spell a word for them I ask them to go get me their word wall book, open it to the the page it belongs on and, then we write it in.  The books empower students to use more challenging vocabulary and spelling in their writing because they can easily find how to spell them again in their personal word wall books.