Word Walls for Teachers

Are word walls a part of your strategy for boosting literacy skills in the classroom? Or maybe you're looking for word wall ideas and printables to add to your teacher toolkit?

The Teach Starter teacher team has carefully created and curated this collection of word walls for elementary teachers to cover your needs — whether you're helping your kindergarten class stay on track with sight words or introducing new social studies vocabulary to your 3rd-grade class!

New to this concept? Our expert ELA teachers have got you covered with a few quick tips to help you determine if a word wall is right for your classroom!

What Is a Word Wall?

A word wall is pretty much what the name implies — a classroom wall display with words in large print that can be read by students from across the room.

What goes on a word wall? Oh, the possibilities!

• Sight words
• Unit vocabulary
• Parts of speech
• Prepositions
• Content area words
• High-frequency words
• Word families
• Spelling words
• And more!

Used as an interactive tool, word walls tend to start out small and grow as you progress through a lesson or unit and students learn new sight words or vocabulary to be added to their word wall.

How to Make a Classroom Word Wall

If this all sounds good so far, let's talk about how to actually create a word wall. There are plenty of ideas out there, from using pictures alongside the words to printing your words on fun shapes, but here are some important tips our teacher team stands by:

1. Make sure your words are printed in large text that can be easily read even by students who are seated across the room.
2. Keep contrast in mind to ensure readability — you might want to use a dark background with lighter text.
3. Organization is key! Many word walls are set up in alphabetical order to make it easier for students to find the words they are looking for right when they need them, but you may want to organize unit vocabulary terms by how they connect to one another or group word families together.
4. Choose a spot on your classroom wall that has space for additional words to be added.
5. Keep your students' usage in mind when you're mounting words to the wall. Using sticky tack or similar mounting putty will make it easier for students to be able to remove a word and take it back to their desks when necessary. You can also set up a word wall with wall hooks and place words on book rings (or looseleaf rings) so students can take them down to flip through!

Easy Word Wall Ideas

Looking for easy-peasy word wall ideas? Our team has got those for you, too, with word lists developed by teachers for teachers! Explore this collection of printable word walls that cover a variety of subjects and grade levels to save your precious planning time.

1. Print and display the vocabulary cards that are provided.
2. Use the customize option to add content words of your own.
3. Use the blank cards at the end of the resource to add any specific words that your class finds during their learning experiences.