Make Ahead Anchor Charts

I love anchor charts!  I think they are such a valuable piece to student learning.  I love getting inspiration ideas on Pinterest and different blogs.  However, in order for the actual charts to be as cute as the ones I see online I would have to make them ahead of time (and I'm not artistic AT ALL so they still aren't as cute as the inspiration) and I lose the value of creating them with the students and having them take ownership.  I used to sketch them out quickly with the students, and then when I had time redo them to make them cute.  But that took WAY too much time!  I wanted a way to have cute anchor charts, but still have them be meaningful to the students.

This summer I made some "fill in the blank" anchor charts.  We have a poster printer at school and at our admin office that can blow things up to a 36x24 inch poster.  I designed these charts and printed them off on the poster printer so that they are close to chart paper size.  I then laminated all the posters.  I will fill in things with the students as we read.  Because they are laminated I can erase what we wrote and use the same chart again for a different book later in the year or erase them at the end of the year and have my anchor charts ready to go for next year!

I also thought that I could print off the paper size version of each chart, and students could glue them in their reading notebooks and fill out their own copy as we fill in the class copy.

Here are the charts I made and will fill in with the students as we learn each skill.

If you think you might be able to use these in your classroom as well, you can download them here.