Graphic Organizers Graphic Organizers Purpose Scaffolds student thinking

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