Anchor Charts, Journals and Sooooo Much Going on!

So I haven't blogged in a month, and there are 10 thousand things going on at school. Space Night was on Friday, and I thought to myself, "Well, now that Space Night is behind me, things should settle down a bit." Uh, what was i thinking?!?

Between RTI, and SSI, and CBAs and missing work, and department stuff, and testing preparation, and curriculum callibration, and getting lessons together, and making my fun anchor charts, and kids in ISS, it is just another normal day at  school :)

Here are some recent anchor charts I have made:

Energy Resources

Moon Phases

The Sun

Water Cycle

Weather Maps

I am really loving how nice and useful our journals have become this year. We don't have textbooks, so our journals are our resource. Most students take a lot of pride in keeping them  nice and neat. We do a foldable or notes on the left side, usually an activity afterwards with the new material, then they complete an application or evaluation journal prompt on the right side so I can see if they got it. Usually there is a diagram or something involved along with writing, so I can tell pretty quickly just walking around who got the material and who didn't. Here is an example of our Sun foldable and journal entry.

Well, I hope you are having a week that is not as busy as mine, but you are probably a teacher, so probably not :)

New Anchor Charts

How do you do anchor charts? Sometimes I make them before school so all my classes see them. Then they are nice and neat. 

Sometimes I start from scratch and make them with one of my classes. You can tell when I make them while hung up because the handwriting is all slanted 

Other times I make a shell before school...

 

...so then we can fill it in together in class and match our notes. 

How do you use anchor charts in the classroom?

Separating Mixtures

We worked on separating mixtures in class this week. We took notes on mixtures, solutions and separating them. Then, using the Separating Mixtures Lab, we looked at the physical properties of sand, salt and iron so we could use them to find a way to most effectively separate them. Students designed their procedure based on their thoughts with their lab group.

After we looked at everyone's procedures, we talked through what we decided as a class would be the best way. 

In our interactive notebooks on the right side, we described and illustrated our final procedure. Here is an anchor chart on what we put in our interactive notebook. 

Sorry my anchor chart handwriting is not beautiful, yet, but I am working in it :)

I hope to get to do many more anchor charts with my students this year!