e added to the wall at the start of the week. Each morning, the students practice forming the letters of these words for five to seven minutes to increase their familiarity with the words. When the students are familiar with them, they participate in various word wall activities such as categorizing the words into groups based on orthographic structures, or using the sound/symbol relationships to decode new words (Kaufman, 2002).
This component should be incorporated into a balanced literacy program for first graders because it teaches them to recognize high-frequency words quickly. According to Holdaway (1979), the familiarization with high frequency words is critical to the children's development of fluency and ease in reading and writing. Unlike many other types of words, these words often lack phonetic consistency, evident meanings and/or visual correspondences (in Kaufman, 2002). Therefore, the best way of learning such words is through increasing exposure and practice.
Moreover, the word wall activities can cultivate the students' recognition of orthographic structures and sound/symbol relationships. They can thus be effective in teaching students how to utilize their knowledge in a creative fashion in order to decode new words. For example, students can figure out how to read new words such as "spot" and "slot" by putting together high-frequency words such as "got" and blends such as "sp" and "sl." Essentially, these students will be able to apply their learning by analyzing new words through the identification of specific patterns (Adams, 1990, in Kaufman, 2002).
The component of reading aloud involves the teacher's oral reading to the students. Typically, the teacher starts by introducing the students to the book, piques their interest by relating the book to the students' lives and conducting a discussion about the subject matter. The teacher then begins reading the book by pointing to the text so that t...