Anchor Charts

Chart paper.
Markers.
Stick figures.
Bubble letters.
Lamination.


Anchor charts.


Anyone else love to make these?  I could write a bunch of stuff about how they're not just pretty pictures but that's no fun.


Here are some of mine!

You better believe they remember the difference now!

Not nearly as cute as I like to make them, but it was helpful.

This goes with this:

It can get annoying when our darling chickadees keep asking WHY they have to learn something, but truthfully, they do deserve an explanation once in a while.  Maybe all the time :)  Plus, the first text we used for the unit that introduced character reactions provided the cherubs MANY opportunities to react.

Explaining theme to 9 year olds was challenging.  Do you like how while I was making this chart I realized they didn't know what inferencing was so I threw in the definition at the bottom?  I explained it later.  Also I thought it was "inferencing" not "inferring" so I get to re-teach that one!  Thanks, anonymous co-worker :)

Goodness gracious do they love my stick figures.

Summary, not summer-y.  No, really.  I had to clarify.

This should be far larger, but at least you get the idea.

It's kind of tough to describe culture.  This barely begins to cover it.  The best part of this lesson?  When we talked about the "tradition" part, I meekly started singing the opening song of Fiddler on the Roof and HALF OF THEM KNEW WHAT I WAS SINGING.  

"Traditionnnnnnnn! Tradition!"

Anyone?

Inferring

I had to look at a lot of resources to clearly explain inferring.  Inferring, metaphor, theme, and culture are all concepts I understand fully, but the difference between understanding a concept you learned in 10th grade and mastered into your early(ish) twenties and teaching it to a 9-year-old is quite significant.  Also it's inferring, not inferencing.  Just found that out.


The cherubs in my class are having some trouble going beyond the text to think about why a character "really" did something or more importantly, why the author used the words he/she did.  It's tricky.  I had to backtrack and explicitly teach them what it means to think beyond just the words on the page.  It was a very easy lesson!


I started off with a mini-lesson of INFERRING skills.  Then we read the short story The Little Hatchet about a little boy and the older man babysitting him.  It's almost 100% dialogue and 4th grade is lucky enough to have literacy aides, so she and I did it Reader's Theater style.  The chickadees cracked up.  They listen intently and laugh at even the tiniest jokes and make my life absolutely complete.


We paused here and there during the read-aloud and recorded inferences.  Then we did more of that after the lesson.  Here are the two anchor charts I used to teach INFERRING, which I left up and referred to during the lesson.  Ignore how it says "inferencing", please.

Try not to be jealous of that magnifying glass.  I'm not even a trained artist.

I know.

I leave this up all the time.  Clear and simple.

I recorded inferences on this graphic organizer on the whiteboard.  The first column was text evidence, the second was prior knowledge, and the third was the inference.  Next time, I might flip it since the kids usually said the inference part first and we had to unpack it together.  However, doing it in this order kept the little equation I made consistent.  I used the same color for each inference and its information.