Anchor activities are student centered activities that are designed to extend and review already learned skills. Anchor activities are ongoing assignments that are self-directed. In other words, the students work on these activities independently throughout a given unit.

For example, in a 6th grade geography class, one anchor activity may be to have the students create an imaginary continent. Students can include country names, borders, and capitals. What’s great is this activity is open-ended and can continue indefinitely by having the students explain how the various governments work, the different cultures, laws etc. The teacher can have the students work on their anchor activities for whatever length of time the teacher chooses.

Anchor activities can be used for many purposes, but one of the best reasons to use anchor activities is to free up the classroom teacher to work with other smaller groups of students or even individual students. For example, the teacher can have half the class working on one of their anchor activities while the other half of the class is working on a teacher-directed activity. This allows the teacher to be able to work closely with smaller groups of students or individual students. After a certain period of time, the students would switch from the anchor activity to the teacher directed activity or vice-versa.

Of course, if the students who are working on their anchor activities are off-task and causing classroom management problems, the teacher will not be able to work with the small groups as the teacher will have to focus his attention on solving those classroom management problems. Therefore, for anchor activities to work properly, clear expectations must be set, taught and practiced. Furthermore, students must be held accountable for their behavior as well as completion of the anchor activities.

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