Anchor Charts: Making Learning Visible

Purpose: When creating anchor charts it is a good idea to keep the purpose in mind. The point of an anchor chart is to help with instruction. Anchor charts provide a visual reminder of the crucial teaching points. If you never reference an anchor chart in a mini-lesson, conference, or share session, it is a good indication that you don’t need the chart. Get rid of it! 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. 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.

Building Anchor Charts: 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, recording important facts, useful strategies, steps in a process, or quality criteria. Students create anchor charts during small group and independent work to share with the rest of the class.

Quality of Anchor Charts: 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 should be neat and organized, with simple icons and graphics to enhance their usefulness (avoid distracting, irrelevant details and stray marks).

Examples of Anchor Charts: Simply Google image search for more!

Videos of teachers making Anchor Charts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDTimtfS21U This video gives great ideas for how to make, markers to use, and how to hang them! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfZADEXcAgk Many samples of anchor charts used with younger students. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4x0d0VDTBE Charts that are made in class vs. charts that are made before class. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Savia6dk3VM More examples of anchor charts in lower grade classrooms. Want more? Just do a search on Youtube.com for anchor charts and you will find many more! http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2015/11/12/anchor-charts-101 Check out the We are Teachers blog for many more ideas for anchor charts!