Anchor Chart Academy

Oh summer....you are far too wonderful!

I have been enjoying my days playing with markers, colored pencils, and posters. Posters, posters, posters...

This 150 hours of classroom work thing has been rather successful so far (80 hours down) as I prepare charts, decorations, and documents for myself and my coworkers. My circle cutter and I did some bonding way back in June, and I finally got those circles adhered to their respective posters.

As promised: CHAMPS Posters!

I've mentioned it before, but we use CHAMPS for our classroom management program. Throughout the activities of the day, we make sure to explain our expectations for (C)onversation, (H)elp, (A)ctivity, (M)ovement, (P)articipation, and (S)uccess. These expectations are displayed on the board for students to reference when they need a reminder.

This summer's CHAMPS party consisted of creating these charts for our whole third-grade team. (dibs on orange!) One of my teammates came up with this great format last year, and we really wanted to keep our expectations the same across the grade level while we also use the Walk to Learn model this year. Her format is particularly wonderful because it prominently displays all of the expectations, and each one can be mixed and matched by moving clothespins around in their respective areas.

Additionally, I've been avoiding the focus wall chore and drawing up some posters that I found on Pinterest. All that art training I have under my belt has helped me to make some very accurate recreations!

We do a huge focus on writing in third, so I really wanted to have a cute chart up!

Way back during the school year, I posted here about our whole school learning about metacognition. One of those strategies involves using paint chips to help students classify how they are feeling about certain assignments. By marking the darker color on the chip, students show that they are not feeling 100% (in the "dark"); marking the lighter color, students show that they are confident in themselves ("it's all clear!").

Yes, these can be flipped around and used in whatever color gradation you wish...but the point is, I want to implement this strategy with the previous poster so that the kiddos can explain how they are feeling throughout the many different concepts of the day.

There are several more academic ones sitting on my desk, but I risk being too picture-heavy this time around....plus, I just wanted to toss in the birthday sign for my friend's baby...because that was fun to play with :)

Soon to come: Exploration of the interactive notebook...and more posters...possibly another focus wall...!