Anchor Charts - Part One

Nearly all teachers use anchor charts.  Anchor charts are more than decoration.  Anchor charts build a culture of literacy in the classroom, as teachers and students make thinking visible by recording content, strategies, processes, cues, and guidelines during the learning process.  They are a living part of a classroom’s meaning-making journey visible to all. The readability, legibility, reliability, clarity, balance, icons, patterns, consistency, and accessibility inspire deeper understanding and independence to empower students for a greater purpose.  Let your classroom walls be a gigantic scaffold, a place to hang and categorize new knowledge, to see connections, to form patterns. 

Teachers model building anchor charts as they work with students to debrief strategies modeled in a mini-lesson.  Students add ideas to an anchor chart as they apply new learning, discover interesting ideas, or develop useful strategies for problem-solving or skill application.  Teachers and students add to anchor charts as they debrief student work time, record important facts, useful strategies, steps in a process, or quality criteria. 

Anchor charts immortalize your teaching and the students learning.  Posting anchor charts keeps relevant and current learning accessible to students to remind them of prior learning and to enable them to make connections as new learning happens.  Students refer to the charts and use them as tools as they answer questions, expand ideas, or contribute to discussions and problem-solving in class. Anchor charts are referenced by teachers to “anchor” thinking.  When planning an anchor chart keep the following question in mind: What are my students learning from this lesson?

Anchor charts contain only the most relevant or important information so as not to confuse students.  Post only those charts that reflect current learning and avoid distracting clutter—hang charts on clothes lines or set-up in distinct places of the room; rotate charts that are displayed to reflect most useful content.  Charts can be place on top of each other so the students have access to older charts if needed as a resource.  Teachers can also take pictures of their anchor charts and put them in a book for students to access as needed.  Interactive notebooks are also a great way to give students access to anchor charts, as they can create smaller versions of the anchor charts to keep in their notebooks. 

Charts should be neat and organized, with simple icons and graphics to enhance their usefulness.  Organization should support ease of understanding and be accordingly varied based on purpose.