Anchor Charts: How Do You Display Them?

Do you think about where you hang your anchor charts? What if I told you the brain can remember the charts best if we display them in a certain way? Read on to see how and why! 

Finally made it to Megan’s room on Friday!After lunch I packed Matthew up and said, “Let’s try this.” I miss being in her room so much, but I love keeping Matthew. So how happy were we when he fell asleep as soon as I got there. (I had just fed him!) And yes, he stayed asleep until the kids left! I couldn’t believe that he would sleep through the noise of 27 kindergarteners, but he did!
So as I was working with kids, I tried to snap a lot of pictures to share with you. I thought I would start with sharing how we display the anchor charts.

Since Megan’s room has a magnetic dry erase board, she set up her anchor chart display there. Here’s what we know…the brain can easily retrieve information if we help get that information organized. One way to do this is to always hang the anchor charts in the same location in the room. That way, once the chart is taken down, the brain has a picture of that chart and can retrieve the information simply by “seeing” that wall in their mind.
The Literacy section is empty, but this is where we hang the reader’s and writer’s anchor charts. The charts are from the 9 Reader’s Workshop units and the 3 Writing units that we use for our workshop times.
One of the staple charts for math is the All About the Number…Anchor Chart. Each week, for 20 weeks, we explore a different number, learning everything we can about that number. The other chart that you see is our Shapes Anchor Chart from the Shapes Unit. Each time we start a unit, we think what are the standards? Then, we bullet them into the lessons that we are going to teach and that becomes the anchor chart. It reminds both us and the children what is important.

Another chart that we use every week is our ABC Unit Vocabulary Chart. We continue adding words to the chart only removing them when we start a new unit. So where is it hanging? Yep, from the window blinds. We keep the blinds closed because the sun beats down in the window making the room really hot not to mention how quickly the sun can fade the paper and fabric in the room!

I displayed a photo of Megan’s academic vocabulary chart last week, but here is one that she actually completed with her kids. They worked together to come up with the words, or linguistic representation, to describe the vocabulary word. Then, each child was given a post it note and asked to draw a picture, nonlinguistic representation, to show what the word means. The picture in the lower right corner shows her academic vocabulary word wall. While not all words will be defined using the vocabulary chart, here is where all words can be displayed. As you can see she only has one word up. This is something that her sub was not asked to do while Megan was on leave. She wanted to start this herself. She will be adding more words over the remaining weeks. These words come from the Math Academic Vocabulary Unit and the Literacy Academic Vocabulary Unit.
So…how do you hang your anchor charts? Feel free to leave your ideas or a link to a post on your blog in the comment section!