Anchor Charts--2nd Edition

We are a couple weeks into the new school year and everything is going great! Our class of 22 is busy learning routines and procedures and new 4th grade skills. Back to School Night took place this past Thursday and it was wonderful meeting many of our new families. The students were very proud to show off their new classroom to their parents and siblings. I always love overhearing their chatter as they show parents "our meeting area", "my desk and morning work binder", "our classroom library and book tubs", and "the place where we do our attendance and lunch count". They are like little experts already!

One of the new things in our district is the new reading series--Benchmark Literacy. This is far from the traditional basal series of the past. It is always a challenge to get to know something new but I think that once it becomes familiar, it will work well with the balanced literacy framework that's already been in place the last few years. I am no longer following Daily 5 (sad face) but I do think this new program does a good job of setting up the routines and procedures in a way that is similar to Daily 5.

As in the past, this program requires a number of anchor charts to be created and posted in the room for the students to reference throughout the year. If you've followed this blog for awhile now, you know that anchor charts have only become a part of my classroom in the last few years. I would like to share some of the new charts created this past week as part of the new series.

This is a new bulletin board that shows all the Metacognitive and Comprehension Strategies covered in the 4th grade BL curriculum. These are a lot like the CAFE lessons I used in D5. Each week, we focus on one of each. For example, this past week we had whole group lessons on Asking Questions (Metacognitive) and Identifying Main Idea and Supporting Details (Comprehension). We refer to this board almost daily!

The components of Readers' Workshop.

What Readers' Workshop Looks/Sounds Like--
These were things the students came up with and they are pretty spot on. These students are very familiar with the Balanced Literacy framework so they now come in knowing expectations pretty well. We will refer to these often as well.

Turn to your Partner--
These are the prompts and questions we have begun to practice using during our reading discussions. This takes A LOT of practice but it will pay off in dividends later on as the students start to have really rich discussions about what is read!

I'll close this post with a photo of my up-and-coming writing center! It includes posters I began using last year and is still a work in progress--but I'm likin' it so far!

Can't wait to share more information with you soon!

Anchor Charts for Writing

If you would've asked me my thoughts about using anchor charts in the classroom a few years ago, I would've said something along the lines of them being more appropriate in a primary room--not so much 4th or 5th grade. I've come to learn that anchor charts are just as necssary in intermediate classrooms--and may even be more beneficial--than in a primary room! Anchor charts are very big in my school and the students here have learned to look for them in their classrooms over the years. My students in the past couple years really rely on these charts and I am always pleased to see a student referring to one when they are working independently. As usual, Pinterest has an adbundance of anchor chart ideas and I have chosen some of those ideas to use in my classroom. Here are a few of our favorites for writing (along with a link to show you where the inspiration came from in the first place!):

These are two of the first charts we do together during our Launching Writer's Workshop unit. Plus, they are just fun charts to have hanging up in a classroom. My students were impressed with my drawings. The inspiration for both charts can be found at Life is Better Messy Anyway.

As we began the writing process for our first piece, we read the book, Little Monster Becomes an Author, and then created the following chart to help us through the process. I made color copies of the pages to add to the chart. It's quickly become my favorite writing chart and we will use it ALL the time! The original post about it can be found here.

When I got to the revising and editing minilessons, we made the final chart below. The inspiration came from Confessions of a 4th Grade Teacher. I've been teaching for just about 10 years and NEVER heard of these acronyms--they are genius!

I think it's safe to say that using anchor charts has changed my classroom!