Tompkins Chapter 5

In the reading for this week, one thing that I saw that related well to my field experience is the use of word walls and how Tompkins applies the use of word walls to the understanding of fluency for both reading and writing. What my CT does with her word wall, is that she slowly introduces words based on degree of difficulty, and once the word is introduced and practiced, it is placed on the word wall where students are constantly referencing it for when they are reading books or looking for how to spell words. This is how the word wall is being used for the writing and reading literacy. I think it is important to keep the words at a level that the students will understand. My CT does this by first only having 2-letter and 3-letter words on the word wall. Now, three quarters of the way through the year, they now have some 4-letter and 5-letter words on the wall that the students are all comfortable with. They also use the sounds that they know from these words to help them apply it to when they are learning new words as well.

Chapter 5

This chapter focused mostly on how to get students to read and write fluently. One of the ways it describes is having high frequency words posted on a word wall so the students see them frequently so they can spell them well and understand how to use them in a sentence. In my classroom, 5th grade, we don't have a specific word wall however we have quotes posted all over the wall. My CT posts them up after they have read them and analyzed them in their journals. This way, if they have any questions about any of the words in the quotes they can ask as we are analyzing them. Also, they will understand how to use them and if there are other ways we usually explain how to use them in those ways. Having them write in their journals also gets their writing fluency better and allows them to look back at the end of the year to see how far they have progressed in their writing.