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How to Develop Anchor Activities for Kindergarten

Anchor activities are classroom learning opportunities for students at the beginning of class, when a lesson finishes early, or when individual students have completed their work. An extension of a class lesson plan, anchor activities for kindergartners and students of all grades should build upon on the skills taught. Instead of simply providing children with work to keep them busy, anchor activities should give students an opportunity to be challenged by the curriculum material or receive exposure to it in a low-stress format.

Instructions

    • 1

      Review the learning objectives for each unit. Your kindergarten class will need to develop certain skills in order to progress through the grade. Note these skills on an ongoing basis.

    • 2

      Brainstorm individual activities that can build upon these learning objectives. Since these activities will be given to students on short notice, for example when they have finished other work or need a focusing project to keep them still, they should be easy to explain. Drawing, writing letters of the alphabet and numbers are examples.

    • 3

      Decide on a range of activities that can be assigned. Depending on the student and situation, you will want to assign an activity that is either challenging or lower stress. A student might be tasked with writing out the names of all members of her family. A more challenging activity might be to write all letters of the alphabet in order, or all numbers from 0 to 9.

    • 4

      Provide a variety of anchor activities in certain subject areas. For example, to build upon a drawing unit, have a student draw a picture of his favorite place on an index card to create a postcard. In pairs, students can compose a story one sentence at a time to use language skills.

    • 5

      Assess each student's progress and reaction to the anchor activities. Check the student's overall progression through the course material and compare it to his performance during anchor activities. You will discover some activities will provide a greater understanding of the material and heighten students' interest in the subject matter.

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