WORD WALL CHANTS
My word wall process goes something like this. I hold up the actual word and say "The next word we are going to work on is (students say it if they know)." We look at it and cheer it three different ways. Then I write it on the overhead and they write it on their paper. If it is the first day for the word, they watch while I write it and talk about letter formation. We then trace and check and then on to the next word. We cheer a lot of different ways. After spelling class I usually feel like I need a shower. The kids love the movement and are ready to return to their seats for writing. I usually do all the chanting before I do the writing. I've never tried to write after each chant. Some of our more unusual ways are listed below.
Mouse -squeaky voice with hands curled up by face
Robot -in robotic voice with arms moving back and forth ("Danger! Danger! Will Robinson" style)
Sing opera style
Fly it like a bird -arms flapping up and down
Chicken - arms folded up to make wings and head moving forward
Nose -- hold your nose and spell it
beat it on our desks
Cheer It (Give me an "h" , etc.) Like a cheerleader.
Pat -- We pat our heads for tall letters, tummies for short letters and knees for letters that go below the line
Snap and Clap -- We snap for the vowels and clap for the consonants.
Raise the Roof -- We just push up toward the ceiling, one push for each letter.
Ketchup -- Shake our hand like we're trying to get ketchup out of a bottle.
Disco (Hand up for consonants, hand down for vowels)
Pretend to be John Travolta.
Box It -- Pretend to be a boxer and spell.
Throw the Stars -- Throw one hand at a time toward the ceiling for each letter.
Be the Letter (Body Language) -- Sort of like the YMCA song. Lots of letters we just make up. When we can't think of anything we just contort our bodies. For the "s" we slither down to the floor while saying "e -e-e-s-s-". A fun one to do.
Mexican Hat Dance (alternate feet in front)
Flapping and Nodding -- Pretend you're a bird and flap your wings and nod your head for each letter.
Stomping -- Just stomp your feet for each letter.
Clapping syllables -- Just clap for each syllable, not really spelling, but I use it before we spell so they can hear the syllables.
Explosion (Volcano) (whisper, normal, loud) They love to do this. Pretty self-explanatory.
Marshmallow clap - Almost clap but stop before your hand touch. Say each letter.
Hula -- hands on hips, swivel, hands in air to say word
Jumping Jacks -- One letter for each movement.
Toe Touches — touch your toes for each letter.
BATTER UP — We get into the batting position and swing on each letter as we say it
SLOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW We hold the sound of the letter or a few seconds like sit... s........................i.............................t.............................!
Motorcycle — We just hang on to "handle bars" and pretend that we are doing wheelies..!
Dribble and shoot -- Dribble the letters and shoot the word.
Ride the horse but this is pretty wild so we don't do it often. They turn their chair around and straddle the chair. Then they rock back and forth and wave their hand in the air for each letter(like a cowboy riding a bucking horse.)
Push-ups. They love to choose this for the long words because I always tease that they are trying to kill me!
Blowing kisses -- Blow a kiss for each letter. On the word use two hands to blow the kiss and extend both arms out and up. Tons of fun, you feel like a movie star!
Some more ideas
I have been doing a game I call STOMP to review our WWW.
I have the children stand in a circle and I lay all our Word Wall Words out on the floor (I keep a copy on index cards and add the new words each week). Everyone is in a big circle and all the WWW are laying face up. We go around the circle and chant in a low, slow voice:
STOMP, STOMP
WHATCHA GONNA STOMP (What are you going to stomp just didn't seen to flow)
ARVIS IS GONNA STOMP...
(and Arvis would stomp his foot on any WWW and the class yells out the word he stomped)
We repeat the chant until everyone has had a turn.
Sometimes we keep the beat by hitting our thighs.
While on our road to the Super Bowl, we spelled our words using really deeeeep voices like a Rams player would use.
