What’s an Anchor Chart?2. The anchor chart is co-constructed with the students.

The brain-based research of Marcia Tate and others support the use of visuals to incorporate new learning into memory.  When the visual represents a learning event that includes the students, it becomes an artifact of the learning experience. *It should be a record of student thinking.* It has meaning for the students because they participated in its construction.  One could think of it in terms of food:  The cookies taste better when you help make the dough.

3. The anchor chart has an organized appearance.

The importance of clarity is paramount to understanding.  If the students can’t read the chart or find the statement of explicit instruction (Where’s the WILF?), the chart will be of no support to the students when they return back to the chart as a scaffold.

1. An anchor chart should have a single focus.

Sometimes a teaching standard is broad by design, such as Students will write with a clear focus, coherent organization, and sufficient detail. (MA ELA #19).   To be able to meet this standard, teachers would have to help students accomplish the many more discrete skills that build capacity to meet this writing expectation.   Those discrete skills make up the topics of the crafting lessons that are taught in the day-to-day work within the reader and writer’s workshop.  It is those discrete skills that are represented in an anchor chart.  For example, the anchor chart to the right supports the learner in one of the skills that would lead toward mastery of the aforementioned standard. http://www.cornerstoneliteracy.org/newsletter-archive/

anchor-charts

*Adapted from Corner Stone Literacy’s article,”Anchor Charts” by Wendy Seger

What’s an Anchor Chart?5. The anchor chart supports on-going learning. One of the most important considerations for learning is whether or not the chart is relevant and used by the students.  Charts should reflect recent crafting lessons or concepts that need continued scaffolding.  Teachers can support learning by placing an anchor chart in a classroom library where students can access the information when they are making their literature responses during and after independent reading. It is within this feature that the coaches felt a commercial chart could indeed be an anchor chart, provided that there was evidence that the students were actually using the chart.

With the recommendations completed, the features were placed into a table, creating a useable tool for generating and assessing anchor charts in each building.

Anchor Chart RubricAnchor Chart RubricAnchor Chart RubricAnchor Chart Rubric

Apparent Not Apparent

Comments

Single Focus

Co-constructed with Students

Organized Appearance

Matches Developmental Level

Supports Ongoing Learning

4. The anchor chart matches the learners’ developmental level.

The language, the amount of information, the length of the sentences, and the size of lettering should all match the cognitive level of the students for whom the chart will serve.  Following this explanation, there are two anchor charts created for the same lesson: introduction to the comprehension strategy of schema.  The one on the left was designed for second graders, the one in the middle for fourth graders, and the one on the right for first graders.  Notice the differences in language and complexity.