Vocabulary that students don't know or remember how to spell are very beneficial pieces of a word wall. My school's library has a giant white board on one wall that I turned into a word wall. I got these amazing Storybook Alphabet Letters from Shannon Gavin via Scribd! Some hot glue and yes, duct tape, has those bad boys hangin' tough!
I use post-its to write vocabulary that students learn throughout their year in library, then stick it up under the corresponding letter. Vocabulary ranges from bookish terms, such as genre to technology terms, such as website. Through much (pedagogical) thought, I decided there really wasn't a way I could have students write the vocabulary words and put them up. I have too many classes and I don't want to waste post-its.
Having a lot on my plate makes it easy for me to forget simple things like stick a new word on the word wall. I solved this issue by inserting a reminder into the schedules I show the classes. To further publicize the word wall, it is mentioned during the lesson and pointed out.
I happened to luck out and land the author, Peter Brown, for my Preschool-2nd graders. What a great chance to start one of my pet projects for this school year--multi-grade author studies. Why not start with Peter Brown?! Armed with the books You Will Be My Friend! and the Bookflix versions of Children Make Terrible Pets and The Curious Garden I began. Using some Pinterst inspiration, I created a folder featuring a mini-bio on Brown, pictures of his books, and a section for students to fill in similarities between his books.
My lesson geared toward kindergarten involved them hearing a very brief bio of Peter Brown and then over a 3 week period, I read aloud You Will Be My Friend!, Children Make Terrible Pets, and Mr. Tiger Goes Wild! I posted the story map elements I wanted them to answer: title, author, characters, and what the characters looked like. Because the studnets LOVED learning about Peter Brown, I can now refer back to this study to remind them about authors and characters.
First grade had a similar study, but I added setting, problem and solution to their story map. One of my 1st graders is never satisfied with her checkout choices, so now she constantly asks me for a Peter Brown book (and who am I to deny a student who asks for a book by the author).
In second grade we only covered one book in class, which was The Curious Garden. For their story map, I added in theme. With my help, I guided the students to think about the theme of the book. The main focus was on big words they learned from Brown's books. We started with gathering words from The Curious Garden, which we figured out the words by using context clues. Then they continued the search in other Peter Brown books and wrote down words they discovered on chart paper.
Overall, this was a good experience just getting into author studies. I've already made tweaks to make the next better.
All Peter Brown books can be pruchased through his website via IndieBound.
