Monday, September 10, 2007

Low-Tech & Simple

I've always wanted a word-wall in my classroom for my students to refer to, in order to make them more independent. This way, they can check the word-wall for spelling before they ask me. The problem has always been organization, coordination, and space. I know that there are a few other special education teachers at my school who would also like vocabulary walls, but because they travel from room to room, they would need words for each room they were in OR a way to quickly pull down and hang up a set.
Enter: Magnet sheets! Woo hoo! I've been looking at these in Staples for years, and trying to find a way to use them for something. Staples, and other office supply stores, along with Borders, are my preferred shopping locations! I love colored pens, too. ;)
Anyway, I used my favorite label template in Microsoft Word. Using a 2x4 shipping label template, I can make 10 vocabulary magnets per sheet, and 50 per package. The package of magnet sheets was about $12 from Staples, but I did find it cheaper at some other on-line stores. I was able to use a nice font at about 36-40 point, and include a picture of the word to help with comprehension, and with the visual learners who remember pictures better than words. And, of course, you could make the magnet any size you want up to 8.5 x 11. It worked really well, and should be fairly portable. I'm thinking that teachers that move classrooms could store them in a coupon box or index card box sorted by letter (or topic). Hanging back up again could be part of a drill/bell-ringer activity for a lot of different concepts: alphabetizing, categorizing, synonym/antonym, etc. Here's a picture of the one in my classroom:

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