Personal Word Walls

As I was cleaning through a pile of papers this weekend (if you know me, you know how unusual that is... I am highly organized at school, but at home, not so much), and I came across something from back in my grad school days. I had a project for one class where I tutored a little kinder sweetie in reading and writing. And one thing I made for her as a reference was her own personalized word wall... in a file folder.

There is not a lower elementary classroom that I have been in that does not have a word wall. Even a few upper elementary classrooms have them. But this one is perfect for small groups, as a reading reference, as a spelling reminder, or all at once. It could even be used to remember academic vocabulary words.

All I did was take a blank file folder. I just used a plain one because that's what I happened to have around, but you could certainly use fancier ones. I gave the cover its title, and again, I just wrote it simply, but you could go as crazy as you'd like, or even have the students decorate their own covers.

On the inside, I used alphabet letters and gave each letter a section with a capital and a lowercase. As the tutoring continued, I added in some blends since we were working on the th, sh, and ch sounds. Then you just add the words you want. I added the sight words we were working on, the words with the blends, and a few we were using in our shared writing project.

Now each student can have their very own personalized word wall. They can write words you tell them to, or add words of their own that they need extra help remembering. And it's quick, easy, inexpensive, and compact to store. What could be better?