Graphic Organizers

Description: Graphic Organizers provide a means for structuring information, for showing the inter-relatedness of various topics, or for arranging characteristics or qualities of a concept or character.  Graphic organizers may be used in pre-reading, reading, and post-reading, as will as pre-writing and aspects of discussion and note taking. 

Purpose:  Graphic organizers allow students to gather their responses to what they have read in a visually organized manner.  Their purposes are also similar to outlining, but are more flexible and are student friendly. By using these graphic organizers, classroom discussion will be enhanced, student writing encouraged, and interest in related literature sparked.

Chain Of Events

Chain of Events is used to describe the stages of an event, the action of characters or the steps in a procedure.  What is the first step in the procedure or initiating event?  What are the next stages or steps?  How does one event lead to another?  What is the final outcome?

Cycle

A depiction of a Cycle attempts to show how a series of events interacts to produce a set of results again and again, such as the life cycle.  How do they interact and return to the beginning again?

Sensory Details Chart

A Sensory Details Chart could be used to teach students to identify sensory details in literary selections.

Clustering

Clustering is a nonlinear activity that generates ideas, images, and feelings around a certain topic or word.  As students cluster, their thoughts come in spurts, enlarging their word bank for writing and often enabling them to see patterns in their ideas.  Clustering may be a class or an individual activity.

Story Maps

Story Maps are visual representations that graphically organize and integrate the concepts and events contained in a story.  What was shown?  Did it show a summary list of the main ideas, major events and major characters in the story?  Was the main idea in the center of the map?  Are there enough ties projecting out symmetrically from the center circle to accommodate the major events/characters on the summary list?  Are the major concepts or events in circles attached to these ties in clockwise sequence around the center circle?  Are the sub-events and sub-concepts in clockwise sequence around the circles containing major events or concepts in the story map?

Storyboard

A Storyboard is a graphic, sequential depiction of a narrative.  Students recall major events of the story, then illustrate the events in the squares provided.

Webbing

Webbing is a simple way to help students recall prior information and form relationships among concepts. It helps students generate a variety of ideas or concepts to a specific topic.  It also provides practice in identifying details in literary selections.  Did I draw on prior information and apply it to the reading task?  Did I use other people’s ideas to help trigger information?  Did I organize information so that relationships can be found and explored?  Was this used as a pre-reading activity and did it help me with my assignment?

Venn Diagram

The Venn Diagram is made up of two or more overlapping circles. It can be used in examining similarities and differences in characters, stories, and poems.  It may also be used as a prewriting activity to enable students to organize thoughts or textual quotations prior to writing a compare/contrast essay.  This activity enables students to organize similarities and differences visually.

Idea Organizer

The Idea Organizer will help students chart in order to analyze essays and other nonfiction selections.

Student Expectations: 

s                  Did the student become more familiar with graphic organizers? 

s                  Did the student accurately complete components of the graphic organizer?

s                  Did the graphic organizer allow the student to make meaning of the story?

s                  Was the graphic organizer a catalyst for classroom discussion?

s                  Did the graphic organizer aid the student to visually connect with the story?

For Graphic Organizer Samples Click Here.

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