Word Wall

A dedicated wall (or shared digital doc) where target vocabulary from the course is publicly displayed, organised by theme or part of speech. Words are added as they come up and referenced constantly across lessons.

Setup

1. Reserve a wall section. Divide into 4–6 semantic zones (e.g., emotions, work, environment, relationships, travel, academic hedges).
2. Use coloured cards or sticky notes — colour for part of speech or theme.
3. Add a column for collocations: next to each noun, write its typical verb partners; next to each verb, its typical objects.

Weekly Routines

Routine	How
Two-minute review	Start of class: point at 5 cards, students say a sentence each.
Swap card	End of class: a student moves one card to a different zone, justifies why.
Steal a word	Writing tasks: students must "steal" at least 3 words from the wall.
Retired section	Words the class now owns move to a "Solved" display.

Why It Works

• Constant exposure: vocabulary is visible across all lessons, not only the one it was introduced in.
• Spaced retrieval is built into the environment.
• Ownership: students add, move, and retire cards; the wall becomes theirs.
• Writing scaffold: learners who struggle to recall a word can glance and recover it.

Variations

• Digital wall (Padlet, Notion page, shared Google Doc): same principle, works for online or hybrid classes.
• Collocation web: a central word (make) with verbs/nouns/adjectives radiating from it.
• Student-curated: each week a different student is the wall's editor-in-chief.
• Frequency tiers: zones for "use every day" / "use weekly" / "recognise only" words.

Tips

• Resist adding every new word. The wall is curated vocabulary — the stuff worth owning.
• Refresh quarterly. A stale wall becomes invisible.
• If the class is online-only, the digital wall must be linked from every task, or it will be forgotten.