Do you need a way to engage students while teaching literacy concepts? Try literacy anchor charts!
Literacy anchor charts provide children with the necessary experience needed for literacy development. Experience making and interacting with anchor charts helps students retain information and connect new topics to what they have learned previously, which allows them to learn concepts better and faster!
Use these two literacy charts from Wild About Literacy by the Between the Lions Staff in your classroom to engage students and reinforce literacy concepts.
Class Name Chart
Begin a Class Name chart to use throughout the year to help the children learn letters, letter sounds, and each other’s names.
Materials
- Pre-made alphabet chart (with enough room under each letter to write children’s names)
- Markers
What to do
- Say, We are going to make a big chart with everyone’s names on it. With your help, I am going to write the names in a special order—alphabetical order. It will be just like the order of the letters on our alphabet chart, in the alphabet song, and in alphabet books.
- Point to the letter “A” on your alphabet chart and say, The first letter of the alphabet is the letter “A.” If your names starts with the letter “A,” raise your hand. Aaron, your name starts with the letter ”A.” I am going to write your name here under the letter “A” on the chart. Write the name on the alphabet chart as you say each letter out aloud—A-A-R-O-N. Ask, Who else has a name that begins with the letter “A”? Aisha, your name also begins with the letter “A.” Write the second name directly under the first name. Follow this procedure for the next five letters of the alphabet. Add to the name chart each day until it is complete.
Class Poem About Food
Skill Focus
Vocabulary
- Favorite
- Poem
- Rhyme
- Rub
- Substitute
- Tamale
- Taste
- Tummy
- Yum
- Yummy
Materials
- Markers
- Sentence chart
- Sentence stripes
Preparation
- Write each line of the poem “Yum, Yum, Yum” on sentence strips and place the strips in a sentence chart.
What to Do
- Tell the children that the poem “Yum, Yum, Yum” is about tamales.
- Recite the poem, pointing to the words as you read. Invite the children to join you. Have them rub their tummies on the last line.
Yum, Yum, Yum
Tamales, tamales
Yum, yum, yum.
Don't you wish that you had some?
Taste so very, very yummy,
I wish I had some in my tummy.
Ask the class what some of their favorite foods are. Make new poems by substituting the children’s favorite foods for the words “Tamales, tamales” in the poem “Yum, yum, yum.”
Say, Let’s change the word tamales in the poem to one of your favorite foods. Kevin said he likes pizza. So let’s change the word tamales to the word pizza.
Point to the word tamales on the sentence chart. Say, The word tamales is written two times in the poem. So we need to write the word pizza two times.
