Creating a Print-Rich Environment

Learning-Focused
Nov 16, 2009

Patricia Syner is a current middle school teacher providing us with great strategies she practices in her classroom

I was just starting my teaching career. I was substituting for a kindergarten class, and the teacher introduced me to a technique called "Read-the Room." I bought an assortment of magic wands and put them in a gaily-decorated coffee can aptly named, "Read the Room." The point was for a child to pick a wand, and go around the room and read everything they saw, which had been labeled.

Later, when I found myself teaching fifth-grade, I decided I wanted a classroom like that, only on a fifth-grade level. The other day when I mentioned creating a Print-Rich Environment in my room, my friend asked me curiously, what it was. I told her it was a method of carefully choosing your new vocabulary words and then reinforcing them with LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies like a "Wordsplash."

I put the new word in the middle of a chalkboard with a bit of tacky gum. We create a word web around it. We copy it into our journal, and then we put the word on our classroom door.

Environmental Print are the words we encounter every day. My husband went to get a bottle of shampoo from the bathroom, and he asked me why it had the word "Shampoo" circled. I remember the day I started my "Print-Rich Environment." I brought the bottle to class and left it where they could see it. Every child, the next day, it seemed, had went home and checked to see if their bottle said "Shampoo." Nobody missed it on the spelling test. There have been many words like this.

It is more than hanging a sign on the door that reads, "Happy Thanksgiving," although that helps, also. It is having a scavenger hunt where everyone brings in as many Thanksgiving ads as they can find, and sharing them, and posting them on a clothesline in the room.

When we introduced the word "Jubilant," I told them it meant very joyous. I was wearing a button on my jacket that looked like the Wal-Mart Happy face. The kids named it Julie, short for "Jubilant." We wrote "Jubilant" on it. Whenever I wear it, the children say, "I see you are in a "Jubilant" mood today. They tend to use the vocabulary more when it is reinforced.

The other day I was standing in the hall doing hall duty. I was holding a plastic orange. It was labeled "Artificial." The science teacher came down the hall. He was holding a "Lemon." It had a smiley face and the word "Lemon" written on it. He had been teaching his class about the acidic properties of lemon juice. We held up our fruit, did a "Fruit Salute," and grinned.

On my desk is a small bottle of coal. Where the price tag once was, is now a label reading "Souvenir." There is also pineapple. It sports a florist pick and reads: This pineapple is not "Artificial." It is edible. Is Print-rich-Environment old school? Perhaps. Does it still work? Definitely!

I recently received this note from a child in my room.

Dear Mrs. Syner,
Since you are an authority on things that are artificial,
Can you tell me if the souvenir I bought is authentic? I would be jubilant if it is real.
Your Student

Attached to the note was a Lincoln penny with Abraham Lincoln sitting down. He had underlined all our vocabulary words.

I brought in a letter from Nancy Reagan she once wrote to my class. I copied it and labeled it "Authentic Correspondence."  I then gave every child a copy. "Wow," said a little girl, "I have never had a piece of authentic correspondence like this".

A Print-Rich environment encompasses so much more than books. I bring magazines that contain articles indigenous to the area where we live. It is a rural area so we have Country Living, and Backyard Poultry, both, which contain articles I have written. On a shelf are books by me as well, like "The Magnificent Rainbow Butterfly Tree." One shelf has a stack of road maps and brochures on travel and local industries. A large photo album with shared Social Studies projects sits among newspapers and a stack of empty envelopes. Students can write correspondence for each other and leave it in the classroom mailbox. We use equity sticks to choose a "mailperson" to empty the box every so often. There are post-it notes and pencils in case you need to leave a note.

Our bulletinboard is also used for vocabulary word projects. One student drew two pumpkins. Underneath she wrote, "I have the dignity to call myself a pumpkin. Wait! I have an inspiration. I have the potential to be a jack-o-lantern."

We publish our own 5th grade newspaper with photographs, quotes, and examples of student's work. We do interviews for our paper. Each student made paper blue jeans to coincide with their Biographies of Levi Strauss. We have an interactive timeline and we label important events and add them to the clothesline timeline that stretches across the room. A tiny pair of blue jeans marks Levi Strauss' birthday. We read the labels on our own jeans to see who is wearing Levis. The next day half the class is wearing Levis. "Can we see who is wearing Levis again today?" they ask.

Somewhere is a stack of songbooks and cookbooks, which I was surprised to see the boys reading. I buy word search puzzles in identical sets of two so they can have races.

I created a classroom Portaportal (a book marking site) so the kids could hook up at home with the same internet activities we did at school. There was a vocabulary game where you defined new words and rice was donated to an underprivileged country. The kids complained because their parents were playing the game and not letting them play. This was a way to carry their "Print-Rich environment" home with them. We made lists of all the types of books we had at home. They were shocked at how long their lists were. I keep a phone book in our room just in case you want to create a name for a new character in a story you are writing.

You have no idea how much fun Thanksgiving can be in a "Print-Rich" classroom. I gather grocery ads for turkeys and serve them to the class on a turkey platter. We compare them to see which store has the best price per pound. Then they go home and tell their parents who has the best buy. An empty stuffing box is a whole other story. I give each group the box and have them double the recipe. We cut the box front up and make a jigsaw puzzle. We reassemble the puzzle. We write our own Thanksgiving stories while I read "Yang's First Thanksgiving" to them. I distribute copies of "Albuquerque is a Turkey." We read and sing and write our own songs.

I found that using LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies helped me create the classroom I always dreamed of. A Print-Rich Environmental Classroom is a place to reach the reader and writer within us all, so that even if we did not think we liked to read when we came, we know we do when we leave.

Patricia Syner teaches at Ansted Middle School in Fayette County, West Virginia.