A Study on the Effect of Two Word Wall Formats on the Decoding Abilities of Second Grade Students

Abstract

The purpose for the study was to determine the effects of two different formats of a classroom word wall (Alphabetical Format, AF, and Rime Format, RF) on one aspect of phonic decoding, namely, decoding by analogy. The subjects were 41 second grade students in two separate classes of a suburban school district. An alphabetical format word wall was placed in each classroom with no specific instructions to the teacher other than to introduce words as usual and then place them in the appropriate place on the word wall. After three weeks, the subjects were informally tested for decoding by analogy with words that share rimes with the words on the word wall. The word wall was then changed to a rime format, where words that share rimes were grouped together. After a period of twelve weeks, the subjects were tested as before. Data were analyzed using a t test of Different Means. Results indicated that the rime format word wall resulted in significantly higher scores on the informal test of decoding by analogy.