Using Anchor Tasks as a Strong Foundation for Daily Learning

When it comes to teaching, educators might shudder at the word predictability, as we associate it with blandness and monotony. Yet, predictability doesn’t need to be synonymous with dull repetition. Predictability can mean security and comfort, providing an essential classroom foundation on which we educators can build the pillars of learning, knowledge, and creativity. Anchor tasks provide a strong framework for the daily classroom, centering and grounding it in structured, repeated activities that form the backbone of daily curriculum.

What’s an Anchor Task?

An anchor task is a routine, activity, or assessment that teachers employ daily, or close to daily. Free from confusion, students can focus their energy on learning. These activities should take about the same amount of time each day.

Anchor tasks foster an anticipated routine in the class that holds the students accountable, gives them something to plan for, and creates a stable classroom environment. Moreover, projects, group work, and different kinds of activities can be built around the anchor tasks. Students’ minds respond well to regular, established patterns and schedules. This is especially true for vulnerable students or those who are experiencing academic challenges.

A Few Examples

Anchor tasks include bell ringers, daily quizzes, daily journal responses, or any activity or exercise that students engage in regularly and that asks for roughly similar cognitive demands.

Anchor tasks are something that teachers do repeatedly—maybe daily or at least weekly. These tasks become familiar and expected. Students know exactly what the anchor tasks demand, and the tasks require little, if any, directions beyond those initially given. Ideally, students can jump into the task with minimal thought. As such, they become routine. These could be used in the beginning, middle, or end of the class.

Here are some ideas:

Bell Ringer Review: “What’s one idea that you remember from yesterday?”

Two Truths and a Lie: Instructor presents two accurate content-based facts and one incorrect one.

Turn and Talk: Ask the class a question. Students answer the question with their elbow partner or somebody with whom they are randomly paired. I like to liven it up by calling on students and asking them to tell me how their partner answered the question or what their partner contributed to their discussion.

Benefits to Teachers

Anchor tasks are also extremely helpful to teachers when planning their daily lessons, as they provide a regular, formulaic activity around which teachers can build curriculum. This is particularly beneficial for new teachers or those designing curriculum for the first time.

Maybe you’re fresh out of school, overwhelmed by planning for your courses. Perhaps you’re a seasoned educator—a classroom veteran with years of experience—who suddenly finds yourself asked to prepare for an entirely new class. In either case, you have to buckle down and strategize. This is where anchor tasks can help.

Anchor methods supply a daily, formalized activity that can serve as a springboard for other activities or lessons. Indeed, you can build a class around one or more anchor activities. For daily planning purposes, use the anchor task as your starting point. A start-of-class reading quiz or a middle-of-class whiteboard review creates a foundation for lesson planners. Sometimes, that initial task can help generate new ideas.

Then, build around it, striving to remain true to the standards and objectives.

Anchor Tasks and Brain Science

According to Michelle Hart Bram, evidence shows that classroom procedures and routines form the “foundation on which we build productive learning.” When students know these routines, “they spend less time thinking about how to act… and more time learning.” Bram also states that such routines free up cognitive load, which allows students to learn more. Sarah Kesty argues that the environment itself can positively or negatively affect learning.

She writes that “the more predictable and clear our classroom environments are, the better students are able to stay engaged, focused, and productive.” More specifically, Kesty notes that a “daily schedule provides structure and predictability for students.” Anchor tasks work quite the same way and can obviously be included on those daily schedules positioned for all students to see. Students will know what’s coming up next.

Anchor Tasks as Formative Assessments

Anchor tasks are a great way to capture quick, important information about student progress. This allows teachers to kill two birds with one stone: give students daily practice in the content as well as acquire formative assessment data.

I give a daily quiz on the previous day’s material. The quiz is taken on our learning management system, which records all the information. The quizzes are between 10 and 20 questions (approximately five to 10 minutes). The latter is important, because anchor tasks should be similar in demands, scale, and scope. They should also preferably be short. 

I have a colleague who uses a variety of anchor tasks. In addition to her more daily and every-other-day anchor tasks, she has incorporated a once-a-week anchor task: whiteboard Wednesdays. This involves students writing answers to questions on mini-whiteboards.

Anchor Tasks, Bell ringers, and Brain Breaks

Some people might think an anchor task is synonymous with bell ringers, but that’s not necessarily true. Anchor tasks can take place every day, every other day, or even every three days. You might choose to incorporate anchor tasks in the middle or even the end of the class (a concluding assignment, exit ticket, etc.).

An anchor task can also be linked to a mid-class brain break. I have used some variation of the following: “OK, everyone—pause and write down two sentences in your notebook that sum up what you’ve learned in the first half of class. Then, you are free to stand up and move around.”

Anchor Tasks and Creative Projects

Anchor tasks provide a great jumping-off point for creative activities and projects. For instance, a project-based class might include a daily journal entry in which students in the process of working on an activity write and plan for the day’s work. That can be the anchor task. The students would know to immediately sit down and write a half-page of thoughts and a bulleted list of what they want to accomplish. Such an anchor task gets students working immediately and helps them organize their thoughts.

Anything can be an anchor task. The sky is truly the limit. Don’t stress about making them complex, elaborate, or extremely creative. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Anchor tasks really work best when they are simple, straightforward, and doable. We want our students to be able to jump into an anchor task easily and with little preparation. These undertakings are meant to be quick ways to ground the class in routine and structured uniformity.