Get Schooled

By Dekalb Educator

October 18, 2006 01:25 PM | Link to this

We have been doing word walls for a few yrs now. To be exact, this is the 6th school yr for using it. It all started with that WONDERFUL thing called America’s Choice. (yes, I am being sarcastic).

Are they needed? hmmm good question. I have one because I “have” to have one. They bark about it if there arent enough words and they ask the students during focus walks how they use the word wall.

By OldSchool

October 18, 2006 01:27 PM | Link to this

Word Walls are one of those “learner focused schools” annoyances. I was likely the one who brought them up because I just plain refuse to use one.

Life doesn’t come with a word wall. Take a look around your office and the offices of other successful people. See any vocabulary lists? Nope. No word walls anywhere.

Now, I have my students do vocabulary words that are important to the subject and I expect them to use them every single day. We “talk technical” in my lab. Using the terms daily locks them into the students’ brains and soon it’s as natural as breathing to use the correct terminology and to understand it.

We give students too many crutches as it is and at some point they need to step up and be responsible for their own learning. Education doesn’t end with a diploma or degree. It’s a daily, life-long process…

…word walls not included.

By Mary

October 18, 2006 02:02 PM | Link to this

I can’t stand the word walls. Talk about creating a maximally distracting environment. Every inch of an elementary school classroom is covered with word walls and posters and other visual clutter. (In many classrooms, this includes junk hanging from the ceiling.) I can’t imagine how a child actually focuses on the lesson being taught. A list of vocabulary words relevant to the current lesson is useful; the random splatter of a word wall is not.

By Dragonlady

October 18, 2006 02:22 PM | Link to this

Me. too, Mary. But many administrators require them and put a black mark against your name in your evalutation if you don’t cooperate. In a “learning focused” school, word walls are one of the many gimmicks administrators force teachers to include in their lessons in order to “raise the level of learning” in the classroom. There are other gimmicks: writing the essential question on the board for the day, etc. If you don’t have your word wall and essential question and graphic organizer on the board when the administrator drops in, various and sundry nasty things can happen. All too often, administrators can’t really tell if the teacher is doing a good job because they don’t recognize the various tools good teachers use, but they can spot the question or the organizer or the word wall. And so then they don’t have to take out the time to really evaluate the teacher. Graphic organizer? Word Walls? Essential question? Hey, she’s doing a great job. Give her a high mark. I know of good teachers that have been driven out of the profession because of this approach.

By science teacher

October 18, 2006 02:27 PM | Link to this

DeKalb County has decided to go against research and common sense and say that every student must be taught the exact same way from elementary school to high school. These wonderful teaching strategies are wonderful if the teachers using them understand their use and can use them effectively. Just because the teacher next door does it effectively one way, does not mean that making me do it that way will make it effective for me. As a matter of fact, just because it is effective for one group of students does not mean it is effective for all students. Everyone is different. The teachers are different. The students are different.

Effective school systems understand that not only is each learner different, but that teachers do not become robots the minute they sign a contract. There are some things I am just not good at doing. Making me teach using only the things I am not good at will only make the students scores go down, not up. Yes, it is up to the teacher to teach for the students. However, I cannot teach you something that I can not do myself. If I do not understand the strategy, I cannot use it. I can go through the motions, but while I am busy going through the motions, valuable time that could be spent planning and implementing truly differentiated and effective instruction is lost.

The whole time they keep calling for differentiated instruction they are trying to make us all do everything the same way from kindergarten through 12th grade. They even want 12th grade physics to have the same grading system as kindergarten. It does not work that way. Once again, DeKalb County says one thing and does another. Thus showing that no one knows exactly what they are doing.

According to Dr. Marzano at McREL, research shows that it takes up to 2 years for a teacher to become truly effective with a new teaching strategy. His research also suggests that teachers should only try a few new strategies each year and that the teacher should choose those strategies. DeKalb County is afraid to allow its teachers to teach, and frankly it is insulting. If they have a problem with certain teachers, deal with those teachers, let the rest of us do our jobs. If some teachers need help teaching, and some do, then help them. Mandating it for everyone just takes a perfectly good strategy, when used properly, and makes everyone think it is useless. Then we throw the baby out with the bath water, and jump on the next band wagon that comes down the pike (excuse the mixed metaphor).

By Janine

October 18, 2006 02:36 PM | Link to this

I’m with Dekalb Educator….WHen Dekalb decided to waste tax payers money on America’s Choice, word walls were mandated..as were numerous wall hangings. It was the **CURE DU JOUR” .There were other Cures du jour before it and surely the educrats will find research that will assure that more will come after….Someone always gets a wild hair and institutes the program that will solve all the problems of all the children.

By luvs2teach

October 18, 2006 02:54 PM | Link to this

Word walls - I had to have them at my old school, which was a learning focused school. I found that there were activities for which I found them useful (writing summary paragraphs for example, or general review questions, however, these were activities that I would probably give them a list of terms to use anyway. I also found that kids missed answers on tests EVEN though the ANSWERS were RIGHT THERE on the wall!

I half-heartedly used them last year at my new school, and I haven’t done it all all this year.

Word walls and word boxes on tests - I know some consider these valid strategies, but I just can’t help but think that they are crutches that make our kids dumber, and don’t force them to learn to recall. I know the push is for our kids to “think” and not just “know,” but they need to know something in order to have any thoughts about it, right?

By JustMe

October 18, 2006 03:12 PM | Link to this

Starting this year, we are expected to have

The funny thing is that we are out of wall space (windows, bookshelves, cabinets, white board, etc.)! The fire marshall told us to take stuff off of the wall, but the almighty administrators don’t care.

One teacher recommended that we create sandwich boards to post all of this craziness. The students do not benefit from any of the this. Who does benefit? It make the administrator’s job very easy to breeze into a room and glance around for this junk, and then leave. They don’t care if there is any real teaching or real learning occurring.

By Bill

October 18, 2006 03:23 PM | Link to this

I’m not a teacher and I’m way too old to have children in the public schools. But one of the things that impressed me most, with my own child, was the fact that when she ran into a word that she didn’t know she wrote it down on a legal pad. The list grew each day. She would either ask us what the words meant or look them up herself. So, instead of a word wall at school, she had a word list that she created.

I realize that not all students would do this without being prompted. And if forced to do it, lists like this wouldn’t be effective. So I don’t suggest it as any sort of magical replacement for the word wall. But if - somehow - some of the responsibility for learning could be shifted to the students I’m sure it would be more effective.

And if, like my daughter, they were expected to come up with their own mechanisms for learning - well so much the better.

I know that many students are not motivated and perhaps it is difficult to impossible to persuade them to take on some of the burden themselves. But if teachers were given the freedom to create an atmosphere where this could happen through coaching, I have to believe scores would jump up.

By Janine

October 18, 2006 03:36 PM | Link to this

Bill The vocabulary notebook [essentially what you described] was my standby until it was forbidden and replaced by the word wall. It was very effective. The Word Wall is rarely noticed by students unless and until the teacher directs attention to it. THe Voc. notebook was always there.

By Lisa B.

October 18, 2006 04:28 PM | Link to this

Thanks for the reminder to update my Word Wall. Our school is having a Focus Walk the end of next week to check for that stuff. My students will find words in their reading journals and write them on index cards so we can hang the words on the wall. Required, yes. Useful or used, no. Just another hoop to hop through.

By Taxpayer

October 18, 2006 04:58 PM | Link to this

oh — my bad … I thought “word walls” were the thousands of defensive words and excuses with which educrats and school administrators surround themselves whenever anyone dares to question them on anything.

By OldSchool

October 18, 2006 05:00 PM | Link to this

So lots of you teachers out there have had the “Max Thompson’s Learner Focused Schools” quick-fix imposed upon you as have I. Well, my thinking is this: if good old Max is such a great teacher, why isn’t he in a classroom? Why? Well, traveling around the country hawking his surefire methods to school systems brings in a heckuva lot more money…and prestige.

So here’s what I do: No word walls. My essential question has been up since the first day of school (it’s REAL generic) and will remain there until after my first evaluation. Then I’ll put up another, remind the students to make me look good when an administrator comes in, and go on doing what I do best the way I do it best.

I don’t do lesson plans by the Max T formula either. In any given class, I have students of all levels, skills, interests, and abilities learning drafting: traditional, AutoCAD 2007 (Mech Desktop and Inventor), Residential Design, and 3D Studio Max (animation). Only my first timers are usually doing the same assignments unless I’ve had to supplement or swap out drawings. At a minimum I would be preparing 5 lesson plans per class but usually it would be more like 7 or 8. Add to that the live work projects that come in each week, special projects for seniors, and SkillsUSA competition preps and you have a lesson planning nightmare. If I had to do word walls for all my students using the specialized language of each discipline, I’d be doing nothing but word walls.

Graphic organizers? They can be more trouble than they are worth just designing one that would work.

All these techniques remind me of the early days of videotape. They were great in very small doses but overuse has caused students to tune them out. Substitute power points or dvd or any other media and the result is the same. Students tune them out.

By the way, I trotted out the filmstrip projector and the 1956 Mechanical Drawing by French filmstrips and had myself a day of “teachable moments.” They LOVED it and participated like they never have before!

By Jeff

October 18, 2006 05:44 PM | Link to this

It is ASTOUNDING that none of my fellow teachers find a Word Wall useful!!!!!!

BECAUSE NEITHER DO I!!!! I have to have one at my school - story of us all. As of right now, mine literally conssists of the words “Word Wall” written on a sheet of white consruction paper and stapled to the wall…. WE ARE 10.5 WEEKS INTO THE YEAR!

I just gave the kids a vocab quiz today though, guess I should put those words on the wall now…..

WHEN WILL THE INSANITY END??

By catlady

October 18, 2006 06:40 PM | Link to this

Jeff— the insanity WILL NEVER END as long as we continue to do crap that someone without the sense God gave a turnip (or who hasn’t been in the classroom in 25 years, if ever) decides that everyone should do. WE ARE PROFESSIONALS! Why do we put up with this?

Good points, OldSchool. I am so tired of the MT stuff I could have a fit. Maybe I will right now, but I will give you a rubric to judge it by.

I am also tired of “unpacking” GPS standards! Give me a break! Why should I pour blood, sweat, and tears into this thing to justify someone else’s $150,000 a year job?

LET ME TEACH THE CHILDREN!!

By catlady

October 18, 2006 06:44 PM | Link to this

Oh, and I DO have a word wall. It is my own, private word wall in my head with words I use to describe some of the idiotic stuff education has become involved with in the last 10 years. I cannot list the words on my wall because this is a civil, community forum, but you can guess some of them….

By Political Mongrel

October 18, 2006 06:59 PM | Link to this

After 30 years of teaching, I learned that fads come and go and come and go and come and go and come and go and come and go …

It seems that every 3-4 years, some local administrator takes a class in which the latest Great Thing is trumpeted. This person will come home full of zeal (among other things) and will decided that the whole school system will be saved by this Great Thing. Everyone MUST do this Great Thing. There is to be no resistance or deviation. Things that have worked beautifully before are now worthless. The Great Thing is now the only way. That is, until the next Great Thing comes along …

People often say that teachers are resistant to change. That’s not true; we’re resistant to change for its own sake or change that simply causes more problems than it’s worth. We all want improvement, but we know that change can be for better or worse, and a large part of the time it’s for the worse. All of us who have been in the business for a long time have a very efficient B.S.-O-Meter built in. If only the Legislature and our administrators could realize it, or at least use their own.

Then again, so many of them have been steeped in it for so long that theirs have been burned out or clogged from the overload of their own effluvium.

By Kage

October 18, 2006 07:13 PM | Link to this

I do have a word wall and I [shudder] like my word wall. That said, I agree with the majority of the posters here. The big difference is, I think, I am not required to have a word wall. I think that makes a huge difference.

Last year, as a homeroom teacher (which in elementary world means you teach everything) I was required to have a word wall. It was open to our interpretation, though, and students were allowed to have ‘portable word walls’ (i.e. the vocab notebooks discussed in other posts) instead of a classroom word wall. I also wasn’t required to post certain types of words, so I posted million dollar words that were generally beyond the grade level. Kids enjoyed using them and knowing how to spell them. I found that semi-useful, but a) it makes for a very cluttered classroom that is a tough environment for kids with attention problems, and b) I resented jumping through a hoop when it was obvious it was put in place more for administrators than for students.

This year I teach math and I love my word wall (the one I don’t have to have this year). I love it because geometry is a struggle for my students and it’s easy to depict geometry terms visually. I like that students can focus on it before we begin to study geometry. I feel that, having seen the terms and the corresponding pictures for a few months, they will better remember the terms when they need them.

By KA

October 19, 2006 08:14 AM | Link to this

Instead of just a simple Word Wall, how about a Crossword Wall, Scrabble Wall, Jumble Wall, or my favoirite, a Sudoku Wall!!!!

By JustMe

October 19, 2006 08:14 AM | Link to this

What the administrators don’t understand (and may never understand)….

Let a teacher use the most effective teaching methods for their particular class. Do not force a method on the teacher on into a classroom because it may be forcing a square peg in a round hole.

A word wall may be an effective technique for some teachers in some classrooms. But, it is not effective for all.

Why is it so very hard for administrators to understand something so very simple - let the teachers do their job!

By Molly

October 19, 2006 08:31 AM | Link to this

The person who decided every teacher needs a word wall is probably the same person who selects textbooks filled with lots of visually appealling “infographics” but almost zero content. At first glance, the textbooks look great, but once you get past the splashy pictures and trivial “factoids,” you realize that these texts are like cotton candy - pure fluff.

Compare the math textbooks used in DeKalb county elementary schools (McGraw-Hill) with those commonly chosen by homeschoolers (either Singapore or Saxon)and the difference is striking. The McGraw-Hill texts are twice as thick - they are filled with full color photographs of ethnically diverse children which impart no actual information. The Singapore and Saxon texts include illustrations only when actually needed to teach a concept, and are then done in one or two colors. Far less distraction, far more math. But not nearly as pretty.

By ?????

October 19, 2006 09:05 AM | Link to this

In education if go slow enough long enough you will be back in the lead.

All of this GPS.Learning Focus, Americas Has run alot of good teachers right out the door. We had several good teachers that were retirement age to say enough is enough. In our small school we have had several to change careers or retire and that hurts the students. I think Admin should be in the class rooms making sure the teachers are teaching and the students are learning. Instead they only come in the classroom the min number of times required. They glance around the room and look for word wall, EQ and any other hoops that need to be hopped into.

By EducatorX3

October 19, 2006 10:45 AM | Link to this

I agree with so much that has been said on this topic! Word walls work only if the teacher makes the decision to use it in the daily instruction. Some use this as a tool, others choose to use a different tool. The idea that everyone must use the same strategies is ridiculous and goes against everything we teach about differentiating instruction for students.

Max Thompson’s work(Learner Focused Schools) is being used as “Curriculum and Instuctional Supervision for Dummies!” I guess some administrators figure that requiring every teacher to utilize the same strategies will some how make their job easier. Even Max says you should “adapt, not adopt.” (I guess they didn’t listen during that part of his sales pitch!) I don’t care much for his packaged materials - not because they are necessarily bad strategies - they just shouldn’t be implemented across the board in every classroom. (that and the fact that much of his “work” actually is copied from other sources.)

The same is true of America’s Choice/Georgia’s Choice materials. There are good strategies included but the idea that every child benefits from the same strategies is so wrong. As is the idea that every teacher will be successful using these methods.

And as for “unpacking” standards - the use of standards-based unit planning can be one of the best tools to put in the hands of teachers but many systems have taken the process and made it a horrible experience for teachers. The idea of planning units by identifying what knowledge and skills need to be taught is nothing new to most teachers - we have been doing it for years. Instead of adapting the process delivered by the state and helping teachers see how it fits with what they are already doing, systems have turned it into a tedious process that only serves to frustrate teachers. If you read Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe, you find that what is going on in most of our systems is nothing like what they had in mind!

By V for Vendetta

October 19, 2006 11:19 AM | Link to this

Word wall. Bah, just another stupid “trick”. Why not let teachers, oh I don’t know, teach? If we were all exactly the same, that would be pretty darn boring.

By jim d

October 19, 2006 11:50 AM | Link to this

Word Wall?

Growing up we had a “word book”. We called it a dictonary. Do they still exist in our schools and do kids today know how to use one?

By Joy in teaching

October 19, 2006 12:09 PM | Link to this

I’ve got a good word wall story.

A few years ago, when my county full embraced the cult of Learner Focused schools (meaning, all teachers need to do the same thing), a county administrator came into my room to look for evidence of specific learning focused strategies (word wall, essential question, graphic organizer, rubrics, student work, etc.) When he came to my word wall, he asked one of my special ed students to explain what the word “ironic” means. Except…he mispronounced the word and said “i-row-nic.” My student didn’t even blink an eye…and not only explained what the word meant, but gave an example.

After the administrator left (who, by the way, has a doctorate in education), my student raised his hand and asked, “why did that man say that word wrong?”

Recently, I’ve began keeping a “fake” word wall up of terms and concepts that I use in class all the time. It stays up all the time and keeps me from spending the hours updating and redoing the darned thing. And you know what? The administration doesn’t seem to care as long as there appears to be one there.

Enough said.

By catlady

October 19, 2006 05:57 PM | Link to this

jim, at my school we are not supposed to HAVE THE STUDENTS USE THE DICTIONARY TO LOOK UP THE MEANING OF WORDS! I swear! We got a memo on this! So now I have 12 great doorstops!

By jim d

October 20, 2006 09:25 AM | Link to this

Cat,

For some strange reason I rather suspected as much. I recall when we were in school a pocket dictionary was a required book to have. Today it’s not being required of my child. Although from the time he learned to read he was encouraged at home to look up words. Whenever he’d ask the meaning of a word that he’d heard on the discovery or history channel we’d always ask him “what do you think it means” then tell him “look it up” so he would be confident using those words in daily conversations.

I must say that even having learned to read phonically he was always quite successful in locating the words and grasping their meanings. Today as a junior in High school he often times comes home and goes straight to the dictionary to look up a word he’d heard during the day that he may not have been absolutely sure of the meaning.

Personally, I believe we are cheating our children by not teaching them how to find answers to questions. Even something as simple as understanding a word. Is that the schools job? Well I really don’t know. What I do know though is that I’m not depending upon anyone else to assure my child has every advantage available to him. I’m much more comfortable doing that myself. To date my strategy has worked well.

And just incase you haven’t noticed my spelling issues, he spells much better than I do. I must admit though that most of my issues can be attributed to life style and the massive self-induced killing of brain cells. :-)

By luvs2teach

October 20, 2006 04:08 PM | Link to this

Jim d - you wrote, “Personally, I believe we are cheating our children by not teaching them how to find answers to questions.”

Oh, I can’t tell you how much I agree with you! My kids often ask me questions like “what page is that on?” - they hate when I tell them to use the index. I do make my kids look unknown words up in the glossary of our text, or the dictionary. I make them use at least once book and/or encyclopedia source for projects (I tell them we’re researching “old school”).

When they get frustrated with me, as they often do, I tell them my paraphrased version of the old saying about teaching a man to fish:

You can give a kid an answer to a question, and then that one question is answered, or you can teach a kid how to FIND the answer, and then they can answer ANY question.

They get it.