I love anchor charts. They are a great visual tool to use in the classroom and they involve your students in their learning. Ok, we can all agree on that. What we all may not agree on, though, is how easy (or not) it is to create such beautiful or creative anchor charts by drawing them. I will be the first to admit that I can NOT draw and trust me this is not a growth mindset lesson. There is no "Carly you just can't draw YET." No, no, no. I'm almost considered a middle age woman and I can full admit that I can not draw. There's no shame in my game. Now with that being said I have learned that I'm pretty decent with creating within Powerpoint (or Google Slides) and that my ability to create an anchor chart that is the size of a piece of 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper, I can handle.
So how do you take the wonderfully beautiful anchor chart that you've created in PowerPoint or elsewhere, which is the size of a sheet of paper, and make it large enough that all of your students will be able to see it? Print it poster size my friend, poster size. No, I'm not talking about sending it to a store to be printed poster size, I'm talking about printing it poster size from your own printer-for FREE!
Let's get to it. Here are the steps that you can take to print a regular 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper to poster size for your classroom. You're going to be the talk of your building with your sweet poster size anchor charts!
Step 1: Create your anchor chart (or whatever) in PowerPoint/Google/etc. You will need to be able to save as a PDF so that is important when you are creating.
Step 2: Save your creation as a PDF. On a Mac you will export it as a PDF and it will save that way. Make sure you name it something you will remember --> Very Important!
Step 3: Open your PDF reader app. I use Adobe but I do know that there are others out there.
Step 4: Once in your PDF reader app, choose PRINT.
Step 5: Once in your printer option you will look down towards the bottom and there is an option to print POSTER size. Click that. You will need to play around with the scale size. I do 180% because that means my normal letter size page will come out on 4 pieces of paper when I print and that is all I will have to piece together. You can make it as large as you want just remember you will be tackling putting that puzzle together! If you are changing the scale size and want to play around with it remember to NOT hit enter each time or it WILL print your page. Always click the over arrow below the picture of your resource as you are playing around with sizing.
Step 6: Once you have your sizing figured out and you are happy with it you are good to hit the glorious PRINT button. Wait for the magic.
Step 7: Your creation will come out in however many pages you made it and now you play piece maker in putting the pages together! I lay mine out on the floor and then decide where I will trim each piece. I tape the top, bottom, left, and right middle and then if it's a poster that I know I will use again and again I laminate it at school using our big laminator.
Step 8: Go grab yourself a drink, you have successfully printed and put together your first poster!
Now that you are a magical poster making ninja you can create all of the anchor charts that your heart wants and blow them up as big as you want! Happy Poster Making!