I was thinking about how many of our anchor charts are teacher-made. Sure, we get student input, but what if we had a way to really include students in our anchor chart-making process? Collaborative anchor charts are made by groups of students after completing a task.
To make a collaborative anchor chart for science vocabulary, 4 to 8 students work both together and individually under the teacher’s guidance to complete a task, talk about it, and write about it. In this post, I’ll share an example of how students made a collaborative anchor chart about electrical conductors and insulators.
Prep
- I taped 6 items to sticky notes with labels and placed them around the room. Each pair of students got the materials for a circuit, light bulb and holder, battery and holder, and 2 wires with alligator clips.
- I set up the skeleton for the anchor chart.
We reviewed our focus vocabulary: conductor, insulator, flow, electricity, circuit, and current.
Pairs of students walked around with a circuit to the 6 different materials and tested to determine whether they were insulators or conductors of electricity. We quickly went over the answers as a class.
I passed out the sticky notes with the items taped on them and a blank sticky note to individual students (this could also work in pairs). Students wrote an explanation of why the assigned material was either a conductor or insulator using the vocabulary terms. Then, they placed their sticky notes on the T-chart and each presented their card.
This strategy helped students get some good practice with related vocabulary and they had multiple opportunities to speak, listen, and explain their thinking both verbally and in writing.
The post Science Vocabulary Ideas: Collaborative anchor charts for electrical conductors and insulators appeared first on The Science Penguin.