Does you Anchor Hold?

One thing that could be very beneficial to students in any subject, especially social studies, is something called an anchor chart. An anchor chart is a chart that can hold specific facts, vocabulary words, definitions, or people's names, on a large piece of paper. When learning about social studies facts, it may be overwhelming for some children. Anchor charts help identify the important things the teacher wants the children to remember. For example, if a teacher read a story that was ten pages long, but she only wanted the children to remember the main character's, she could list those names on the anchor chart, that way children could refer back to it if they had a question.
One thing we did in our social studies class, was we had to pick a topic that had a lot of facts in it, and then make an anchor chart. Since my group didn't know a lot of the facts about the Boston Tea Party, we decided to research that. We looked up information in books, and on the internet, and then wrote down the concepts that we thought were important. Since the Tea Party happened in basically 5 parts, we decided to make our chart into a story board. Each section told a little story and displayed a picture, that way the children could read the text, and then visual learners could connect the text with the picture.

No one in my group had ever heard of an anchor chart before and we were so glad we were introduced to it because we will all use it in our future classrooms. Not only can it help the child learn the important parts of social studies, it can help them dig deep and find the information and learn something new. Anchor charts will also be beneficial because it is student work displayed around the classroom if they make their own charts.

Anchor charts are an essential part of the classroom. Below is a link to a blog posted by a teacher. She shows us how she used anchor charts to teacher her 5th and 6th graders about the Indians.

Anchor Charts in the Classroom!