Interactive Word Walls



Word walls are a common classroom tool used to support vocabulary development in science and other content areas. Traditional word walls usually only include single words and sometimes a picture, but really don’t allow students to connect the academic vocabulary with the scientific concept. So how can a traditional word wall be transformed to become an Interactive Word Wall (IWW)?
Julie Jackson, a professor at Texas State University outlines these five steps to designing an IWW:

  1. Teachers plan the IWW by determining vocabulary from the TEKS and sketch a
concept map or frame.
  1. Teachers create a student organizer/record sheet that mirrors the concept map or frame.
  2. Teacher builds the frame for the IWW and places in an area where students can access easily.
  3. Students build the IWW in class using artifacts and/or pictures (during the Explain phase)
  4. Students complete their student organizer/record sheet and write their claim in class.
The power of an IWW is that the students create the wall themselves, arrange the wall, talk the wall,
write from the wall, and therefore ultimately have ownership of how the words connect to the concept.
Many of our district teachers have attended one of Julie Jackson’s workshops at CAST or a professional learning on campus.
Here are a few teachers that have utilized her strategies in their classrooms:

Joe Parthemore, 5th grade teacher at Cannon says, "I value interactive word walls because they strategically
target academic vocabulary in a way that visually scaffolds and reinforces my classroom instruction. I find that it also makes organizing instruction easier and helps students understand content connections".
Samples of word walls that Joe has used in his 5th grade science class this year:
Irene Boynton, 1st Grade teacher at Cannon, has used interactive word walls extensively in her classroom
in all content areas.  Check out Irene’s Blog Post to learn more.


Visit The Science Toolkit for free resources.
If you would like more information, see Interactive Word Walls Hyperdoc.

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