Word Wall Linky

I'm joining Jen at The Teacher's Cauldron for a Word Wall Linky party.  Look at her cute button!  I still can't get the pic to be a link so join her  Word Wall Linky here.

I do Word Walls largely based on the Four Blocks model.  Did anyone do Four Blocks back in the day?  There are things about my WW that I wish I could change.  I wish I had a space in my room where the word wall could be closer to the floor so the kiddos could manipulate it.  But I have to use the space that I have.  We do enough activities that the wall isn't invisible to them, and they also have their own word dictionaries with the word wall words in them.

Here's a snippet of the wall.  My shelf was too junkie to give you the whole wall! Ha!

Here are a few things we do...
Spotlight!  They LOVE this.  We shut the window blinds and turn out the lights.  I give one child a flashlight, call out a word, and they have to find it.  There's a cute little jingle that goes with it but honestly...after a few times I'm over it lol.  I'll find it if you like songs and jingles.  Once we get good at finding the words, we go into teams with dueling flashlights.  Haha, no we aren't sword fighting like on Star Wars (although they'd love that)!  I call out the word and we see which team gets it first.  On rainy days they come into the room telling me it's a good Spotlight day.

Be a Mind Reader  We played this today so I could take pictures.  They know we are going to play Mind Reader when I come out looking like this...

I swear I have on a decent shirt! It looks like I'm about to fall out!  Please ignore the horrible shelf and counter behind me!  I didn't know that was showing!  **groan**

Okay, back to Mind Reader.
1.  I give the kids a sheet of paper.  I could make some really cute paper, but honestly we are being fussed at so much about paper consumption that we just use good 'ole notebook paper.  I have them number 1-5.
2. I use a different voice and tell them that I'm thinking of a word on the word wall.  I really play it up here.  I love being silly with them.  I stroke my hat, hum, and go around touching them on the heads.  
3.  I give them clues and they write down what word they think I'm thinking.  The example below will help me explain.

My first clue was that the word started with an F.  So they chose one of the words on the wall that started with an F.  My second clue was that the word ended with a D.  Her choice still fit the clues so she wrote food again.  My third clue was that the word had an I in it. Whoops! It can't be food so she had to come up with a word from the wall that started with F, ended with D, and had an I.  She chose friend.  My next clue was that the word had six letters.  Yay, she wrote friend again because that works!  A lot of the other kids had "find" as the word so they had to change words here.  The fifth clue was that everyone has one and Ms. Kinzalow is one of mine.  Friend!  They all had it by then.  We did it a few more times because we were actually ahead of schedule today.  Miracles!

I had more to share today, but that wore me out!  It's too late for a nap, huh?  Happy Monday night!