Back-to-School with Anchor Charts for the Artistically Challenged

Recently, I was putting together a nouns grammar resource, and I wanted to include some kind of anchor chart because I see all the beautiful ones on Pinterest all. the. time.  But whenever I try to actually draw one, it's a dismal failure.  The one I actually did make for nouns was really not helpful because the kids really had no idea what I drew.  Being the beginning of first grade, adding a label was not helpful for every child because not every child could read the label.

 

 

So, in the noun resource, I decided to include all the pieces necessary to construct an anchor chart with the children.  It is super simple to do.  First, print out the pieces, cut them out, and have them ready for the  lesson.  Then, gather the children around the chart paper.  Tell them today you are going to answer this question (glue on the question "What is a noun?"  Read the question to the children, then read it together.  As you say "A noun is a word that names..." glue on that phrase.  Then add the just the words in four spaces under the beginning phrase.  Be sure to leave space to glue the two pictures to the chart.  So you will glue on "a person", "a place," "an animal," "a thing" in different places on the chart.

Then you display the pictures of the nouns.  Have the children name each picture, then let them take turns putting the pictures under the correct definition of a noun.  When it is finished, it will looks something like this.

Please excuse the poor printing.  My inkjet printer was having "nearly out of ink" issues at the  time that I printed this out.

So, now you have built an attractive anchor chart with recognizable pictures that you will be proud to display in your classroom for your students to use as a reference.  Your children have gone through the process of building the chart with you, and they even had a chance to interact with the building of it, so hopefully the meaning of noun will be embedded for life so when they go to 2d grade, they don't give the 2d grade teacher the "deer in the headlights" look when she asks, "What is a noun?"  Instead, every hand will shoot up, and the 2d grade teacher will say, "Wow, your first grade teacher did a FANTASTIC job teaching you about nouns!"

Since the idea of an anchor chart is something you want to build with the kids each year, there are two ways to approach this.  You can either A.  Print out the pieces each year and build a new chart, or B. laminate the chart paper first, then add Velcro to the laminated chart and the back of the pieces.  That way you can remove the pieces and redo the chart each year.  Oh, I thought of C as well.  You could use foam board, add the Velcro, and make the chart on the foam board.  Which actually would be an awesome idea for me because then I could lean them against my walls since we're not allowed to hang anything on the new paint. (insert frowny face here).

Anyway, if you would like to try this anchor chart for yourself, you can click on the finished anchor chart picture below and download the pieces to experiment with over the summer.

If you'd like to check out the larger Noun package that this came from, it's available in my TpT store.  Just click the preview below to get there, and be sure to download the free sample in my preview!

So there you have it!  I hope you find this idea useful.  I'm sure I'll be creating many more of these Anchor Charts for the Artistically Challenged, so keep your eyes open for them!

Have a great day!