Graphic Organizer
Overview
Visualizing how ideas fit together helps students construct meaning and strengthens their recall. Graphic organizers outsource the memory demands of a task by mimicking the brain's mental schema, supporting students' cognitive development and, in turn, their literacy skills.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how this sixth grade teacher uses a graphic organizer to help her students brainstorm domain-specific Vocabulary in preparation for an explanatory writing task in a lesson from adlit.org. As students fill in the graphic organizer, they have the opportunity to share and discuss their findings with classmates, thus giving them multiple exposures to the Vocabulary.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
Learn how Popplet allows learners to create their own graphic organizers or collaborate to create a graphic organizer as a group. In addition to traditional text, learners have other choice options such as adding or changing drawings, photos, videos, colors, and fonts, which support increased engagement.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Visual Learning Tools Strategies
Advance graphic organizers link prior knowledge to upcoming learning to help students anticipate and understand the structure of new information.
Using visual aids, such as pictures, diagrams, and charts, allows for additional processing time and supports learners by breaking down content and skills into more manageable parts.
Sentence frames or stems provide language support for students' writing and participation in academic discussions.
Providing visuals to introduce, support, or review instruction activates more cognitive processes to support learning.
