My dad and grandma are in town visiting right now, but I have been feeling the itch to get into my classroom and begin setting it up before classes begin on August 22. I snuck away for a few hours yesterday morning and put up all of the permanent posters that will adorn my walls this year.
Use your walls!
Our walls our one of our greatest resources in supporting comprehension for our students. My walls are filled with posters that I reference regularly at the beginning of the year, and that we use less and less as the year goes on.
By posting frequently used words on the board that carry little meaning on their own but that make a big impact on overall comprehension (think conjunctions, prepositions, etc.), I eliminate the need to teach them explicitly. They come up constantly, naturally, and I can point to them whenever I use them. Quickly, students do not need me to point to them, but they remain present for students to use when they are producing language (speaking or writing).
Some of the vocabulary is designed to help my students narrate, and some will help them understand, respond to, and ask critical thinking questions.
Get these must-have posters for language classes!
All posters are available FREE to download from our Subscriber Library. Look in the "Posters" folder!
Check out the word wall signs for Spanish class!
The first two are the Compare and Contrast Signs and the Narrative Vocabulary sign (please excuse the error with later/finally/at last...it is corrected in the file and in my classroom, I just didn't take a new photo!):
Next, these three signs: Conjunctions and prepositions, Common storytelling words, and Vocabulary for Academic Writing
These Standards Based Assessment posters are so that my students understand the grades they receive:
These Question Words Posters (along with the "hay - there is/there are" poster, not pictured) are the most important in my room.
The Expressing Opinions is new this year, and I hope that its presence will encourage me to up the reps of these structures and that their accessibility will encourage students to use them more often.
