When I was a classroom teacher (over 98%EAL/D students) I created word walls with my students. The students helped to make the objects for the display and then, as a class, we would come up with meaningful labels. I would then hang the objects and the labels up on the wall near the writing area. As the students had been involved in the making of the objects and of the labelling of the objects, they knew what each word said or meant. They would then refer back to these key vocabulary words in their own writing.
Below are two different word walls I created. I thought I had more photos of my word walls, but I can't seem to find them. My favourite word wall was a story map of 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' that the students made. It was three metres long! It had actual mud and grass on it. The students loved creating it. When it was finished we sat down together, as a class, and went through the story and came up with labels that we could put on each part of the map. The labels included not only the place names, what was at the place (e.g. mud) but also the sounds and how the characters were feeling.
The next day I did not hang the word wall up on the wall. Instead I laid it across three tables and left some puppets of the characters (just photocopied from the text and cut out and glued onto sticks) sitting at the beginning of the story map. The students, during Literacy time, then used the puppets to go through the story map.
The next day I hung it up on the wall and the students were given pieces of paper stapled together to make a book. They were told to write their own story of the bear hunt. They used the word walls for their key vocabulary - and they loved it!
Here are some examples of word walls I have made.
While these are just Infants examples (I taught in an Infants school) I have seen some very good word walls used in Primary classes. HSIE and Science topics are great to make word walls with. I have seen two word walls that really stand out. One was in a Year 5 classroom. The students were studying Antarctica and the teacher had created a word wall with pictures, labels, information and student's art. The word wall was added too over the term as they discussed and learned new vocabulary. I wish I had a photo to show you as it was great! Another great one was of the gold fields. A teacher filled their whole back wall with a hand drawn picture of the gold fields and on the wall they labelled the picture with the different mining tools, tents, Police etc. The students could then draw on this large, labelled mural in their narrative writing of the gold fields. One of the students even made the comment that it was like you didn't have to imagine being there, cause the picture took you there......and those students were able to use the vocabulary of the gold field in context.
I hope that you get some inspiration from my word walls and from those that I have told you about. They are a really useful tool to explain and remind students of key vocabulary.