Anchor Charts...

I had a question today about introducing anchor charts to students. So I will tell you a little about how I typically introduce mine,  how we use them in our classroom, and how I decide which anchor charts to create.  My anchor charts are always based upon the skills I am teaching for the week or an important topic that we use daily (rules, morning routine, what is a good listener, etc). This week for example I am teaching about the phonics skill short /a/ and character and setting. Therefore, I created an anchor chart to go with each of these topics. 

How to introduce the Anchor Chart?

I like to create my anchor charts that involve our skills of the week with my students… therefore, I always do my "sloppy copy" with them.  That way the students are involved in the process of brainstorming what will go on the anchor chart. I like to guide this brainstorming process however, the students think they are in charge of this process. Then I take that "sloppy copy" (which means my messy quick handwriting and pictures) and recreate it on my own time into a neat and pretty anchor chart. The following day I reintroduce it to my students and we review what we talked about the day before. 

During the rest of the school year I tend to leave a lot of my important anchor charts up in various parts of the room! These are the ones that we constantly need to be reminded of. This is helpful when we need a reminder of this particular topic, we can just refer back to the anchor chart!

Anchor charts are also great for modeling neat handwriting, modeling your standards of great work, and AWESOME for a print rich environment!

Here is the current Anchor Chart I introduced today about IPICK! These type of anchor charts I always create before since the students do not brainstorm ideas to help create the poster. We then all together go over and discuss each part of the chart! 

*Thanks Cara for the inspiration of my chart!

Here is some others I have posted in previous posts...

Hope this helps!