Anchor Charts

Over Spring BreakThe first day of my Spring Break, I read Reading with Intention by Debbie Miller. I made notes while I read the book to make the learning stick and to have note to use when I met with mentor later in the week.

In the book, Debbie mentions several times "anchor charts". She doesn't give any definition of them or anything. Unfortunately, in my ENTIRE teacher preparation/education not one teacher mentioned the term anchor charts. Yes, we made charts, but I had never heard that term. I made a note of it as something to ask my mentor about. She was pretty floored that I wasn't sure what it was (as she was when I couldn't define or explain what shared reading is...thanks University!).

I realized that I was already making them, just not calling them anchor charts. I make them all the time, especially when we are learning new phonics sounds.

Last week and this week, I have challenged myself to make charts that are creative and really help my scholars cement the phonics skills.

Here's my /ie/ pie. I know I could have added words like tried and pried, but I really wanted to keep the words simple for this one. I am definitely not an artist. My scholars think I am. I am pretty proud of it. We're going to make an /igh/ light bulb this week, too. The picture is not the best quality. I took it with my phone.

Brag moment: My sweet, most struggling reader and I have been working one on one for the last month. He's reading 30% of our HFW. I started having him chant the words he doesn't know 5 at a time this week. We have been working on 5 for the last two day, and I am going to add one or two more tomorrow. Today we started a new story. I did a thorough picture walk using the words in the story and tapping into his schema of planting flowers with his mom. While reading the story, he read poke, seeds and holes BY HIMSELF!!! We sounded out the word 'next' together. When he came to the word 'shake', he started sounding it out by himself. As I quickly dealt with a scholar having a melt down, I heard him start with the s and h separate, but then put them together to make one sound. When I got back to him about 10 seconds later, I praised him to for sounding them out and then remembering that they go together. I asked him what he knows when there's an 'e' a the end of the word. He remembered that they say nothing and make the other vowel say the long sound. He put the /sh/, /A/ and/k/ together to say the word. Oh man, he was on point today. SO SO proud of him.