Graphic Organizer
Overview
Graphic organizers (GOs), including advance graphic organizers, play a critical role in supporting student learning by helping them structure and connect information. Advance graphic organizers—such as Know/Want-to-Know/Learned (KWL) charts—specifically prepare students for new content by linking prior knowledge to upcoming learning. These tools allow learners to anticipate information structures and facilitate deeper learning by engaging their Working and Long-term Memories.
For students with learning differences, particularly those with Working Memory deficits, GOs serve as external scaffolds, helping them retain and organize vocabulary, process multi-step concepts, and make connections across a text. By reinforcing meaning through repeated interaction and structured retrieval, GOs enhance verbal reasoning and background knowledge integration, particularly benefiting multilingual learners and those needing memory support
