How can one teacher manage a differentiated classroom of learners, where 3 or more different activities may be taking place in 3 or more different groups of students? How can one possibly have time to give students the individual feedback that is so crucial to their growth?
Using Anchor Activities is one way to make this daunting task much less daunting.
Basically, an Anchor Activity is an activity that students can turn to independently if they are finished with the task you've given, or if they are stuck and waiting for your help. You may need to teach it once or twice, but it is something fairly routine that students should get the hang of quickly and be able to do with complete independence. Anchor activities can even be used as a routine to focus students at the beginning of a lesson, but they are really designed to keep everyone productively learning even while you are working with another group or individual. You may decide to keep a really great Anchor Activity throughout the school year, or change it up depending on the unit of study.
Some examples:
Daily journal prompt
Math problem of the Day
Vocabulary puzzle
One Anchor Activity that I've used was "Portfolio Paragraphs". This was a list of prompts in each student's writing folder. They knew that if they were done with something and awaiting further instruction, they could go to that list of prompts and start writing a paragraph response. I was going to assess them, but only at the end of the term. Students could go to that activity as they needed, independently, without asking my permission or interrupting anything else in the classroom.
Anchor Activities are also really helpful for those last 5 minutes of a lesson where everyone is already done with the task you've given.
Much has been written about Anchor Activities, so if you're interested and looking for more examples or ideas of how they could be used in your classroom, check out this helpful PDF:
Anchor Activities
Or this teacher's blog: http://mrscathleen.blogspot.com/2013/06/anchor-activities.html
Using Anchor Activities is one way to make this daunting task much less daunting.
Basically, an Anchor Activity is an activity that students can turn to independently if they are finished with the task you've given, or if they are stuck and waiting for your help. You may need to teach it once or twice, but it is something fairly routine that students should get the hang of quickly and be able to do with complete independence. Anchor activities can even be used as a routine to focus students at the beginning of a lesson, but they are really designed to keep everyone productively learning even while you are working with another group or individual. You may decide to keep a really great Anchor Activity throughout the school year, or change it up depending on the unit of study.
Some examples:
Daily journal prompt
Math problem of the Day
Vocabulary puzzle
One Anchor Activity that I've used was "Portfolio Paragraphs". This was a list of prompts in each student's writing folder. They knew that if they were done with something and awaiting further instruction, they could go to that list of prompts and start writing a paragraph response. I was going to assess them, but only at the end of the term. Students could go to that activity as they needed, independently, without asking my permission or interrupting anything else in the classroom.
Anchor Activities are also really helpful for those last 5 minutes of a lesson where everyone is already done with the task you've given.
Much has been written about Anchor Activities, so if you're interested and looking for more examples or ideas of how they could be used in your classroom, check out this helpful PDF:
Anchor Activities
Or this teacher's blog: http://mrscathleen.blogspot.com/2013/06/anchor-activities.html
No comments:
Post a Comment