Mrs. Spy Comes to Town- Living Anchor Charts

My dearest friends, I've come to tell you the power of voice and characters.  Sometimes when you are busy trying new things, you tend to forget to come back to the basics and just play with the kids.  I wanted to jazz up my reading and keep the kids engaged, so I just started using voices and characters, much the same as they do in the book Interactive Think Alouds.  (Thank you Kerry!)  Of course, it's best when you take the idea and make it your own.  (and drum up a bit of courage.)

I went in the hallway, put on a pair of  plain, fake glasses, used a Julia Childs' high pitched voice and used pictures to read pages.  In the next days that ensued, I went through the room with a discovery voice "oooooh....look at this!  I found the ER sisters!  And over here I found  the Quiet Brothers -  pointing to SH."  Each day I highlighted a new feature: the  alphabet cards, the chunk cards, resources and reading clues all around our room. 

These are now my "living anchor charts."  I KNOW these kids are connected to these cards because they keep helping each other refer to them, saying, "remember when Mrs. Spy showed us where the ER sisters were?"    I will keep referring back to these cards and charts to keep re-remembering what we've learned.

The coolest part of  my adventure was that I pretended that I had totally forgotten my name, and the kids named me, further engraining my character and anchoring our reading work.  They look for Mrs. Spy every day and tease me saying, you look a lot like Mrs. Wallace.  And, "hey, you're wearing the same clothes!"  There's still magic in first grade.  I love their joy.

The interesting part is that it doesn't matter what the prop, nor how big or fancy it is.  It's different and fun and therefore, engaging.

I have a funny feeling Mrs. Spy will be back in the future to continue our "living anchor charts."
:)

Oh the things Pictues Can Do! Low Tech for Technology Tuesday

Hmmm...funny this post has had some "technical" difficulty... made me laugh since this week's post is more low tech...

In the past few years, I've used a lot of pictures in my classroom, mostly to label work and make class books.  But last year, I began using them for lists; and this year, I pinned some things on Pinterest  from Chartchums about using pictures for anchor charts.  Wow!  How that little added piece of personalizing a chart creates more engagement for the kiddos.  I'm sure I haven't even
touched the surface of what I can do with such charts.  I might not even be able to keep up with my ideas for them!

My favorite part about the Chartchums' poster was how the kids used sticky notes for parts
they were currently using.  This is a  quick visual for the teacher and a token of accountability for the student.  Can't wait to use it for my Writing Workshop charts this week!


This week I used pictures to show what Reading Workshop looks like.  I went around the room taking pictures of kiddos completing the Daily 5 T-chart rules:  remaining in one place,  quietly,  reading the whole time, keeping our feet and hands to self, and our class agreement to stay away from our friends (since we are a bit chatty around them.)   This is an awesome management tool as well because they all want to be "caught" on camera!  I tell them it's documentation for their parents that they're working hard and doing a fabulous job!

I will repost pictures later as I'm still having technical difficulties.

Have a happy week!