Anchor charts have been a part of my teaching for as long as I can remember. Generally, I like to create the base, or background, of the anchor chart before class and fill it out WITH students during class.
For example, if we were working on doing a retell, I would draw a 5 finger retail graphic organizer on anchor chart paper, then fill out the parts with students as we read a story.
However, my anchor charts always.... looked... off. I tried free handing them, I tried complicated tracing methods. I'm not much of a perfectionist and I understand not comparing myself to others, but when I looked around at other teacher's anchor charts, I was disappointed in mine.
On top of being disappointed, I was spending SO much time creating them!
Finally, it occurred to me that I DID have a way of making GREAT anchor charts. I could create them DIGITALLY!
Here is how I do it!
1. Using Power Point, I use clipart, shapes and text boxes to get the background part together. I always make sure I leave plenty of space to add to with students.
2. Save your poster as a pdf. I also keep a Power Point copy in case I need to make changes!
3. Open the anchor chart in Adobe.
4. Print the poster!
- Choose Poster option in Page Sizing & Handling
- Set Tile Scale to 200% (This creates a poster over 4 pages, which is my preference. You may want to play with the sizes!)
- Create an overlap (This makes taping the pages together easier. I like .10 inches, but you may want to play around with different sizes.)
- Check the Cut marks box (This helps make trimming and overlapping neater.)
5. Trim, tape & hang!
Pros
- look neater
- reprint from year to year
- time saving
- easy
- learning curve for lining up the images
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Thank you so much! I look forward to reading what you have to say!