From word walls to sound walls: making the shift at Gladbrook Reinbeck Elementary

Gladbrook Reinbeck Elementary teachers Nicole Creswell and Ashley Caslavka recognized a need in their first-grade classrooms. Like many teachers, they had noticed their word walls functioned more as wallpaper than as a tool for learning. Then, at the Central Rivers AEA Literacy Conference in 2018, they learned about the impact of sound walls from a session presented by Dr. Antonio Fierro. After, Nicole and Ashley decided to make the shift- “We switched because we spent so much time teaching the sounds and sight words.  We would teach that letters don’t always make the same sounds and now the sound wall helps us show that.”

Traditional word walls are organized alphabetically using the 26 letters of the alphabet. Typically, the classroom teacher creates the word wall, storing high-frequency words by their initial letter. The goal and purpose of the word wall is for students to be able to independently reference learned words while independently reading and writing. However, a major pitfall of this method of organization is that letters or letter combinations can sometimes make multiple sounds. For example, take the word know. On a word wall, it would be organized under the words that begin with the letter k, but it actually makes the /n/ sound. For emergent readers and writers, this can present a big challenge when trying to independently access this tool for learning.

The English language is made up of 44 speech sounds (phonemes) and over 200 ways to spell those sounds (graphemes). To support emerging readers and writers in learning new words, sound walls can be incredibly impactful. Instead of arranging words by initial letters, sound walls are organized by the 44 speech sounds of English- the consonant sounds and the vowel sounds. The word know might be taught and stored with other words that begin with the /n/ sound like knight, night, and new. 

Nicole and Ashley explicitly teach students how to independently interact with the sound wall. “We demonstrate the sound we hear when we say a word, and model finding that sound on the wall to find the word we are looking for. It has helped our students become more aware of the different sounds letters make, especially the vowels.” Sound walls are well supported by the science of reading research. “Not only do sound walls support students with learning high-frequency words, they support students in retaining and learning to read unfamiliar words on their own” (Marjorie Bottari). 

Interested in learning more about sound walls and the science of reading? Contact your literacy consultant for more information!