Back to School Anchor Charts

Summer has meant spending a lot of time on Pinterest... Here are my versions of two pins that I thought were worth recreating.  :)   

Inspiration for chart from The New Principal Principles
Quote by William Glasser

My class spends a lot of time those first weeks discussing how we learn and why we do things a certain way (routines and all that).  I'm one of those people that need to know the importance behind why we do things, and I like to pass on that information to my students.  I really feel it gives the students ownership in their learning.  Even if my students won't understand percentages right away, this top chart will show them that it makes a big difference to be active in their learning. 

   

Inspiration for chart from Teacher Trap

As for grades, this is the first year of letter grades and it's a doozy of a transition - for both students and families, especially if the child is the oldest in their household.  A little reminder that grades are more than just what you comprehend, that effort is also required to earn those top percentages.  

I wanted to share these, just in case you haven't seen the original pins on Pinterest.   

Hope you have had a great day!  

Monday Made It: Easy Anchor Charts

Monday Made It and I actually have something to share?!?  Wow!  

I absolutely LOVE using Interactive Notebooks for every subject, especially for Math.  The past 2 years I've been having my kids use Create Teach Share's 4th Grade Math Notebooks to start or review a concept.  They are wonderful!  Of course I bought them before she had a bundle... :)   

For my kids, I print the first page (out of 2) of each concept half size - which means there are 2 sheets per page.  It makes it easy to send off to the printer and saves on my copies, plus it's the perfect size for our composition books.  Then I use the second page to give me ideas as to what else they can write in their notebooks as additional examples.  In fact next year's notebooks are already prepped at school.  I also usually have one set for my own notebook as we go through it together.  

The thing with doing it all in the notebook though, was that we weren't making many of those anchor charts to hang up on the wall.  We did so much review together in the books that it seemed way too repetitive to then make a poster about it - plus we easily ran out of time.  

I missed the ready reference of the charts and needed them to come back!

This spring I had a breakthrough though, I printed off a set of full sized interactive notebook pages of our lesson to turn into anchor charts.  It was a quick cut and glue, and then as a class we created the chart together (and they then had a matching one in their notebooks).  I only wish I would have thought of it sooner!  

This next year I want to be prepared.  I figure that if they are already on a piece of chart paper, then I won't forget about them in a file folder.  Today I've been taking my master set of full size copies, and putting 2 standards per chart paper.  It's mainly just cutting, gluing, and a little marker to show the separate lessons.  I'm keeping them attached to the ream of chart paper so it's easy to keep them nice and neat until it's lesson time - just folding and flipping them up to keep everything intact.  

Now as a class I just need to pull the chart when it's time, and then we will fill it in and highlight key words.  :)  Easy peasy!

Here's the bundle again if you want to take a look!  She also has 3rd and 5th as well!

Hope you have had a great day!