Word walls are visual tools that have been used in reading classrooms for decades. Now, there are different kinds of “walls” that help early readers reference words and sounds to support their language and literacy development. 

The key focus in traditional word walls is to create a visual tool in the classroom that supports vocabulary development. To create a traditional word wall, teachers use bulletin boards or pocket charts to visually display and organize important words that students are learning currently.

Words are chosen to foster word recognition and vocabulary expansion connected to reading materials or important concepts that students are learning. The words are typically displayed by categories and themes to help students recognize relationships between words and their meanings. Word walls can also be organized as a running list with new words listed alphabetically—this is often the case when the word wall is used to help early readers recognize high frequency words.

See some examples of word walls.

Word walls help to create a print-rich environment that allows students to see, become familiar, spell, and use the new words in their own reading, speaking, and writing. In some classrooms, students can add unusual words they find interesting to the word wall. Word walls should be dynamic tools where words are added or taken away frequently. 

Sound Walls

While word walls focus on vocabulary development and the meaning of words, sound walls are a newer tool used in classrooms to support early readers in learning how to read. Sound walls are designed to help students make connections between letters and sounds and learn phonics skills.

To be able to read, students must be explicitly taught to hear the individual sounds or phonemes that are heard in spoken language and match them to the graphemes, or letter or letter sequences, that represent those sounds. Sound walls focus on helping students become more aware of the sounds in words and how they are represented in writing.

Sound walls are organized by displaying pictures of the 44 sound units in the English language. For each sound, a picture is provided of a word that includes that sound. The different letters/spellings that can represent that sound are listed under the picture. In some cases, teachers also display photos that show students’ mouths making the shape of the sounds/phonemes along with the corresponding sound-spelling cards. Usually, vowel sounds are displayed separately from consonant sounds. Teachers add to the wall as they teach students specific sound and letter correspondence pairs. 

See some examples of sound walls.

The visual reference helps students use the speech-to-print approach that emergent readers must learn to be able to decode (read) and encode (spell) effectively. Sound walls provide visual support to identify different sounds in words, leading to improved reading fluency. Sound walls also help students spell words based on the sounds in a word. Students listen for each sound in the word, find the picture prompt word related to that sound, and can then see the different options to spell that sound on the wall. 

Is one “wall” better than the other?

Both word and sound walls are valuable tools in the classroom to enhance language and literacy skills. Early readers benefit from having sound walls that are used to explicitly help them master letter-sound correspondence needed to become proficient readers and spellers. Students also need tools to develop their growing vocabulary throughout their learning in school. Thus, word walls used dynamically can help students across grade levels reference the new vocabulary words they are learning. In the early grades, teachers often use both kinds of “walls” together to provide a comprehensive language learning environment.

References

Keys to Literacy, Joan Sedita, Word Walls, Sound Walls: What’s the Difference?.

Reading Rockets, Marjorie Bottari, Transitioning from Word Walls to Sound Walls.
Really Great Reading, Sound Walls vs. Word Walls.