Vocabulary instruction in History class doesn’t have to be dull and dry! With these strategies, word walls can provide fun and effective instruction in key social studies concepts.
As any educator worth their salt knows, all teachers are vocabulary teachers. No matter what content area we specialize in, it is essential that vocabulary instruction is embedded into our routines in order to help students comprehend our subject matter. If you teach social studies, you know that students need a firm grasp on many new and challenging terms to be able to understand all the complexities of history, culture, society, geography, and more!
But how do we provide students with the terms they need to know without boring them to death with simply a textbook glossary or a printed list of words and definitions?
Don’t get me wrong, there is certainly value in teaching students how to navigate a textbook. However, in order to ensure that students deeply process and retain key vocabulary concepts, we need to find a better way.
Word walls are an amazingly effective vocabulary tool for your social studies classroom. Let’s briefly recap what word walls actually are, and why they’re beneficial. Then, talk about how to actually use them in fun, interactive ways for students!
What is a word wall?
I like to think of word walls as places for words to live in your classroom. Once we teach a vocabulary word, we have to give it a home so students can reference it again and again. To make a word wall, simply write or type the word you want students to learn along with its corresponding definition, and display it prominently in your classroom. Make one small poster per term and definition. Big bonus points if you can add a picture or a symbol for each word (more on that later)!
Think about all of the essential terms for your social studies units, such as causes of the American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution, Branches of Government, Ancient Egypt, etc. You can put up all of the words for a unit up at once or you can gradually grow your wall throughout each unit and throughout the year. The possibilities are endless!
Word walls…
- Support visual learners
- Provide consistent access to key terms
- Help students see patterns and relationships among words
- Serve as a jumping-off point for interactive vocabulary instruction to enrich understanding
Make your word wall interactive!
Word walls are meant to be much more than just a cool display to fill up that empty wall in your classroom.
To really unlock the magic of a word wall, we need to make sure students use it, talk about it, write about it, and more! Incorporating these types of word wall activities will ensure that it truly becomes a meaningful, powerful tool in your classroom! Here are some ideas:
Simple word wall activities:
- Let students generate the pictures to correspond with the terms. You could give each individual kid a word, or they could work in teams or partners. Just remind them that the pictures need to reinforce the definition, and they need to be neat and easy to see from their desks.
- Have students rearrange the words to show connections. You could let them do this with the actual word wall (just make sure you use the right kind of adhesive that is repositionable). You could provide them with categories such as politics, geographical features, presidents, historical villians, heroes, etc. Or, you could let students come up with their own ideas. It’s so much fun to watch their creativity in action!
- Alternatively, you could make a miniature version of the word wall that students could manipulate and play with at their desks, using the permanent display on the wall as a point of reference when they want to try different categories.
Easy and fun word wall games:
- A simple game that brings lots of smiles requires the use of fly swatters! For this game, cover the definitions and leave only the word displayed. Divide students into teams, then call out definitions and let kids race to the wall to swat the correct term! Be sure to lay a few ground rules first, aka no swatting students 😉
- Use flashlights! Sooo many possibilities here. One idea involves helping students make connections between words. Turn off the lights and give one flashlight to a student and reserve one for the teacher. Shine a light on a word, then let the student shine a light on another related word…but they have to explain and support their connection!
- Play 20 questions: Pick a word but don’t share what it is! Explain to students that they have to ask 20 questions to deduce the correct word. This works great when you already have a lot of words up from several different units, so they have more options to help them generate questions.
- Act it out! This is a fun one for social studies in particular. Imagine the fun that could ensue when students are asked to act out a term like “revolution”!?
- Storytime: Challenge students to write a story that uses a required amount of words from the wall. You could give the story a theme or a topic or just let them be creative!
- Make it a Mystery: Interactive Word Wall Mystery activities are a great way to make your word wall extra interactive and fun! Let’s use the American Revolution Causes Interactive Word Wall to demonstrate. This set includes vocab words such as: unconstitutional, propaganda, blockade, alliance, boycott, rebellion, Paul Revere, Tea Act, Sons of Liberty, etc. (30 cards with student friendly definitions are included in total). Students will read each vocab card several times, and work to complete tasks such as matching and fill in the blanks…all while finding clues to solve the provided mystery case!
Word walls in social studies can be a starting point for so many enriching activities and conversations in your classroom. Just remember to make it “come to life” with interactive word wall activities that your students will enjoy!
