One Thing You Can Do To Differentiate Your Write the Room Activities

Write the room is an activity that has been around forever. I think it gained a lot of popularity around 2012 when teacher blogs were starting to pop up everywhere. But… just in case you’ve never heard of it before, let me give you a quick explanation of the activity.

Write the Room Examples

Write the room is an engaging, movement-based activity. It can be used for a variety of skills and topics but is generally used with vocabulary-centered work. Generally speaking, students will walk around a designated space (classroom, hallway, etc.) to find a particular set of something and write down what they find.

Here are a few examples:

• Nature: students walk around the playground with a clipboard, paper, and pencil and write down any plants and animals they see
  
  
• Sight Words: students walk down the hallway with a clipboard, paper, and pencil and write down all sight words they see on bulletin boards

To make write the room better suited to your student’s needs, there is a myriad of sets to buy on Teachers Pay Teachers. These sets are typically focused on one skill and include cards to place around the room with a matching recording sheet. You can find sets for vocabulary, CVC words, math, and more!

How to Differentiate Write the Room

There are a few ways to differentiate this activity for your students, but the simplest way I have found is by having students ‘write’ down different things.

For example, if you are working on the alphabet, your students could…

1. write down letters they see in the classroom
   
   
2. draw a picture of objects that begin with a target letter
   
   
3. use inventive spelling to write objects that start with a target letter

You may even find sets like this that have differentiated options included!

In this version, there are six word cards for each letter of the alphabet.

The first recording sheet requires students to write down the six words and has space to practice writing uppercase and lowercase letters.

The second recording sheet requires students to write down the six words with a word bank to assist them. Then students have space to practice writing uppercase and lowercase letters.

Try an Alphabet Write the Room