Graphic Organizers

Graphic Organizers Purpose: Scaffolds student thinking, activates prior knowledge, serves as an advanced organizer, and provides rich assessment data. Skills That Can Be Built: Comparison, contrast, classification, synthesis, evaluation. Click here for additional Information

What is a Graphic Organizer? A visual that represents the relationships of ideas or information from some source using words or abstract symbols K W L

Graphic organizers help people focus on important points organize information in a coherent manner see relationships of concepts and elements understand the big picture

Graphic organizers can be used for Information generation creating or presenting lessons brainstorming Information acquisition reviewing topics Knowledge assessment formative and summative evaluation

Types of graphic organizers Concept maps Venn diagrams K-W-L charts Webs (spiders)

Applications Use graphic organizers: Before a lesson or topic to orient the class (activate prior knowledge etc). During teacher modeling or explanation. Any time, to check understanding of material. After a teacher explanation, demonstration etc, to enable students to cognitively process the material. to break up a long period of sustained activity. Whenever it is helpful to share ideas.

Variations/Accommodations Allow students to choose among different graphic organizers when more than one will accomplish the same learning goal