Anchor's Away!

I don't know about you. But, I love anchor charts!

I use them so much in my teaching because they are a great way to get my kiddos excited about what we're learning. And, I have to say that blogs have completely changed my outlook on anchor charts. They're all so cute! Mine are nothing compared to some of the awesome ones I see out there, but I thought I would share some of the types of charts I use in my classroom. Some of these are new from the beginning of this year and some are from the end of last year.

I used this chart to teach my kids about labels. I was all proud of it until one of the kids told me she loved my drawing of a lady bug. (??) But, this is still hanging in my room and the kids refer to it daily as they draw pictures.

There's absolutely NOTHING cute about this chart. But, it has helped my kids SO much this year in writing sentences. They will actually touch their heads while they're thinking, touch their mouths while they say the sentence and then go back and check it. I'm probably going to need to make this a more permanent poster in my room to help them out all year.

I got this idea from The Inspired Apple. Her stuff is so cute! I did change some of the strategies to be more specific for my kids. I plan to have this up all year for them to refer to.

We do a TON of these charts! This is just one I happened to still have from last year. You can tell from the lact of "cutesy" that it's pretty old. But, it does the job. I love having charts that they can add to all week.

And, seriously, how cute is this:

It says "how I now a tornatoa is comin is by waching the news."

Me too, friend :)

We made this chart last year to help write paragraphs. This format worked GREAT because it helped them organize the format of their writing into five sentences. I definitely plan to use this again later in the year!

This one is just cute :) We used this on the last week of school last year when we had Pirate Day - which was a total blast! I think they gave some pretty good guesses about why pirates wear an eye patch.

One thing I do try to do is to add initials to our anchor charts. I think it gives them some ownership for their responses.

This is one of our biggies in first grade. We call this a GO chart and it comes from the book "The Power of Retelling." We use it with basically every basal story we read. We talk about the vocabulary and then they make predictions about words they think will be in the story. (LOVE this idea!) Then, they make predictions about the story before we read. Then, under the third column, we do some kind of comprehension (depending on the week's skill.) This little chart is super easy, super fast and super effective.

I've also been trying to incorporate anchor charts into math.

We made this at the end of last year. I really enjoy the "schema" and "misconceptions" categories. And, I swear, they gave me every single bit of that information to put on the chart!

Sometimes we use anchor charts to review...

and sometimes we use them to ask questions.

These t-charts are my new favorites. What a great way to organize their thoughts. We even used this today to write three sentences about our pets.

I can't take ANY credit for this one. The whole first grade does it. We make a new one every week. It's suuuuch good practice for them to read and repeat all week. At the end of the week, I tape them to the edge of the dry-erase board and they read them at the fluency center. They roll a big dice and the number it lands on is the number they have to read to their partner. I LOVE this!

This is the last one. Promise. I saw this on Pinterest and I couldn't wait to copy it! My kids read this every day. And, they are even starting to refer to it when they are spelling and when they are trying to decode words in Guided Reading. It's such a great resource to have in the room.

I can't wait to see everybody's anchor charts.

Have I mentioned that I LOVE them?