Anchor Charts 2.0

Just like any teacher of the 21st century, I love anchor charts. They are a great reference for the scholars while learning their new skill. I love the moments when I'm assessing the scholars, and they turn to the correlating anchor chart for help. And like most teachers, I tend to Pinterest ideas for anchor charts relating to the next topic I plan to teach. So many great ideas are out there, why reinvent the wheel?

But one thing I read in the last couple years was a criticism of the way most of us do anchor charts. Unfortunately, I don't remember the source, but the author mentioned that premade anchor charts (you know the kind, the "Pinterestable" ones) are not best practice for the scholars. The creation of anchor charts should involve the scholars. They should be interactive and made with the scholars. But let's face it, the anchor charts we find on Pinterest require being made ahead of time, at least if we want them to look that good.

So one of my mini professional goals is to create more interactive anchor charts. Now, I am far from where I hope to be, but I've started the journey.

With this new objective in mind, I thought about the logistics I needed to consider in order to make my anchor charts interactive. First of all,  I would need to plan them ahead of time. Additionally, making an anchor chart from scratch during class time would be incredibly time consuming. So I needed to find ways to make sure class time will used wisely. And then there's the worry about remaking the same chart every year instead of being able to reuse it. If I laminate it, it would be less editable, so I would need to find ways that still involve the scholars. So in a nutshell, I wanted anchor charts that were partially made and laminated for reuse while also being interactive.

My first idea was incredibly simple: leaving blank spaces and filling it in with the scholars. I would have my chart laminated, and then I could use wet-erase markers to complete it with the scholars. The wet-erase lasts so much longer than dry erase, and yet they still erase with just a squirt of water and rag. And we all have boxes of wet-erase markers somewhere tucked away from the time of overheads. 

Here you see an example of my noun anchor chart. The main definitions and outline is already made. Then the scholars helped come up with the examples.

The second way required a little more prep, but once more very simple. I used premade cards that are added to the chart by the scholars. I like this option when the topic doesn't have a lot of examples that the scholars can think of themselves, as in there are specific answer that leave little room to interpretation. I have the cards premade and pass them out the scholars. Then the scholars are involved in adding them to the right place of the anchor chart.

Here's an example: This is my author's purpose anchor chart. The scholars are given cards of examples of questions to ask to determine the author's purpose, and they tape it in the correct column. These questions would not have been something my scholars can think of on their own.

As you can see, neither one of these ideas are difficult to implement. They just require restructuring some of our favorite anchor charts just a bit to help involve the scholars a bit more.