Word Collector Display

I love the idea of using personal and class "Word Collectors" in the classroom.  I was inspired to do this after reading The Daily Cafe.  After teaching the mini-lesson over "tuning into interesting words", I pass out personal word collectors for my students to keep in their writing folders.  This really has helped my students expand their vocabularies and encourages  them to give more attention to new words in the books they read.  Students may add words to their collectors at any point during the day.  We also have a whole-class collector posted in the room where we write words we want to remember from shared read alouds.  The kids are obsessed with this!  In the past, I made a new class word collector every year by using a large piece of butcher paper and drawing [crooked] lines with a yardstick.  It was one of those summer tasks I dreaded doing because it always turned out so ugly.  So, I made one that I could print, laminate, and write on with dry erase so it can be used every year!  (You could also write the words with permanent marker and use the Expo marker or hand sanitizer method to remove the words at the end of the year.)  Out with the ew, in with the new!

 

Definitely don't try to cut corners and not use card stock.  I did this the first time around and it looked bumpy after putting hot glue on the back of each square to hang it.  Needless to say, I pulled it all down and started over.  (I'm going to pretend that I don't see the smudge marks our school's laminator made at the top of each square the second time making it.)

I have this Word Collector in my TpT Shop if you are interested!