It is so helpful to have reading and writing anchor charts or posters available for students in multiple formats. This way, students have their posters to refer to at home or in different classroom settings besides just the classroom.
A few months into the school year, it can be easy to have posters taking over your walls. Although it is certainly helpful for students to have access to visuals on the wall, they have the opposite effect when they become overcrowded and too busy. When students have access to their own posters, it allows you to clear off posters from the wall after you have worked on a skill.
Below are some other ways you can use the same poster:
1. ORGANIZE POSTERS ON A KEY RING:
Organizing posters on a key ring is a great way for students to easily access tons of reference posters. They can remove or add posters to their key ring as needed. You can have them organized in different key rings by topic (i.e. reading strategies, vocabulary, etc.) or by skills they have worked on and skills they are/will work on.
On the key ring above, I printed this set of posters at 4/page under print settings. You could of course print them larger or smaller and still use the key ring though.
2. MAKE DIVIDERS:
If you are working on a specific reading or writing skill, you could have students create dividers using their posters as the cover of that section.
They can glue their poster right onto a 3-ring binder page tabs or onto a page with a sticky note in their binder. Then, students can reference their poster as they fill in targeted graphic organizers or writing on the following pages.
3. DISPLAY AS A FOCUS NEXT TO A WORD WALL:
I like to have a word wall of terms with basic, brief, student-friendly definitions up for a topic all year long. The smaller cards don’t take up as much wall space. Then, next to the word wall cards I display a full-page, more detailed poster zooming in on the skill we are working on.
4. PRINT POSTERS SMALLER FOR INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOKS:
You can print posters at a smaller percent or even 2/page to make smaller posters that fit more easily into a composition notebook.
5. PRINT AS A LARGE POSTER:
If you are looking to print a full-page anchor chart even larger, check out this blog post on how to print a large poster using four 8.5” by 11” pieces of paper.
6. PROVIDE POSTERS DIGITALLY:
Providing reading and writing posters in a format like Google Slides™ is a sure way to keep posters intact and organized. It also ensures students will pretty much always have access to them, whether they are at home or in school.
The posters used in the pictures above come from my Reading Posters and Writing Posters sets!
