Anchor Charts

Over the past few years I have noticed more and more how amazing anchor charts can be! I have been teaching for quite awhile and have seen trends come and go. I can remember back to when I first began how I would have to buy all kinds of posters to focus on a certain topic. Then about 3 year ago I began seeing anchor charts and just fell in love with what I saw!

So what exactly is an anchor chart? An anchor chart is a tool used to support instruction and help move the students towards the goal of a lesson. They can also be used for classroom management!

Why use anchor charts? I feel like they help my students during lessons. I have often seen them look over at a chart to make sure they are on the right track.

I try to have a few anchor charts each week. Most times I will model the lesson or strategy on chart paper. Then once the lesson is done they are posted all around our classroom. Here are a few I have used in the past

An artist I am NOT! Thank goodness my kids don't mind ;)

I used these last year for math. Looking back most of my charts were for math lessons!

This one was quite popular on Pinterest and Facebook. 

After I made them I realized that for some of them I do not want to go make them every year so I decided to laminate them. I rolled them up and stored them in a poster box but, I have seen some very creative ways to store them on pinterest~ my favorite is using a hangers and clips

This will be one of my summer projects. I want to redo and make more anchor charts. If you follow me on Pinterest you can see I LOVE to find all kinds of charts to pin. Click { HERE} to check out my board. It is filled with SO many ideas!  In fact one of my most popular pinned item is this one from FirstGradeBlueSkies:

How cute is this?!?! Just love it :)

Last summer I also realized that anchor charts do not have to be written on chart paper. This year I made TONS of poster anchor charts that I have all over my classroom

 This one is all about writing SUPER sentences and this has been up all year in our writing center

                               I have these right by my table for small groups

These are our class rules! At the beginning of the year I just showed the pictures to my students and they created what our rules should be. Unfortunately the paper we used to write and sign the rules got ruined and I didn't replace it :/

I try and change my charts up depending on the topics we are working on. Unless I feel like it has information that can be used and my students may need to look at then I may leave it up even longer.

If you ever look on Pinterest for anchor charts there are TONS of ideas for everything! Some of those charts look sooo amazing. I can try and make it look just as cute as those are but as you can see by my drawing skill above that is NOT where I excel ..haha

So do you use anchor charts in your room? How do you use them? How do you store them? Do you have a Pinterest board about them too? If so comment below I would love to follow it!