Word Wonder in Action

Word Work PD Gallery Walk

Boggle board in Ms. Florita's classroom

Students use these slips to create their words!

In our most recent PD Cycle, we've been studying Word Work (vocabulary-building) through the Balanced Literacy framework.  We latched on to the idea, as expressed by Patricia Cunningham in her book What Really Matters for Vocabulary, that just as there is such thing as a "people person," there is such thing as a "word person," someone who loves meeting new words and loves interacting with them.  Since we know we can never teach as many words as our kids need to learn, we want to develop a building full of word people.  Step one is instilling a sense of "word wonder" in our classrooms.  Check out Ms. Florita's boggle board!  The students can compete in the game whenever they are finished with their independent work, and once every two weeks, Ms. Florita picks a winner and reshuffles her board.  The best part is the prize for winning: a book of the students' choice, ordered using grant money from Amazon.com.  (Overnight delivery free!  It's immediate gratification and a great way to build our reading culture as well).