We create Anchor Charts of student learning frequently in our classroom, particularly in our Closing Sessions. Sometimes these anchor charts are a "sloppy copy" completed during the Workshop and meant only to post in the classroom for a short period of time.
However, on other occasions, we spend time after we've created a Closing Session "sloppy copy" with the students to make a polished chart that will hang for the entire unit, because it's a chart that students will have to reference often. You can see one of those charts, Strategies for Comparing Fractions, hanging on our Math Anchor Chart wall. I want to reiterate that these charts are never hung until after the Workshop and the "sloppy copy" is made with students. Some of the charts, that take extra time to create, we laminate and use from year to year.
This year, we decided to be more organized with our charts. A colleague shared her strategy and we loved it. We purchased some pant hangers from Target that have an add on loop at the bottom of each hanger. The hangers hold a chart and you can add the next hanger on the add on loop. The beauty of the system comes from the easily made stacks and we LOVE the fact that we can see the title of each chart. We took it one step further and hung the charts by subject and unit for easy accessibility. The display you see below hangs neatly in our closet. We hope you love the idea as much as we do!
How can there not be a comment on this AWESOME idea? I'll be the first to say, this looks brilliant. I also love how you emphasize here that you CO-CREATE THE CHART WITH STUDENTS, then make from that a neat anchor chart to hang for the rest of the unit/year. In our first grade classrooms, we're trying out using a hanging valet that sticks out of the wall to keep many charts accessible to students and teachers, but this method would work great for charts that teachers can move to the front and back... (the looping together might be too tricky for first graders to untangle...)
ReplyDelete