What graphic organizer is used to help students organize information according to various steps or stages?

• Organize information
• See the relationships between ideas
• More easily understand, remember, and apply information

Douglas Dexter, whose primary research interest is successful inclusion practices for adolescents with LD, has focused much of his attention on the effectiveness of graphic organizers. Listen as he describes three reasons that graphic organizers are effective for students with learning difficulties (time: 2:02).

Douglas Dexter, PhD
Assistant Professor of Special Education
The Pennsylvania State University

View Transcript

Transcript: Douglas Dexter, PhD

The good news about graphic organizers and in such content enhancements, they really benefit everyone. This isn’t just a tool for my students with high-incidence disabilities. This is a tool that’s going to really help everyone in the classroom. Why are graphic organizers so effective? We have three big ideas that we can focus on. The first one, graphic organizers make information extremely explicit and clear. The spatial arrangement of the main concepts or information on the graphic organizer make it very clear for the students how those facts or concepts are related. It makes those relationships very apparent. And when I talk about relationships, those can be temporal, having to do with time, spatial, semantic, sequential, hierarchical, or comparative. The second big idea for why graphic organizers are effective is because they serve as a bridge between new information and prior knowledge. So as a teacher if I present very general ideas of a new concept and compare that to a concept that I have previously taught my students, it’s going to better allow my students to understand that information and link it to their prior knowledge, which is critical for students to learn new information. This is much more effective than giving an introductory lecture or a text introduction to a new subject. And finally the third big idea for why graphic organizers can be so effective for students with LD and ADHD is because graphic organizers really minimize the stress on the working memory. Students with LD and ADHD, they have difficulty identifying those main ideas and supporting details. They have those issues with identifying and ignoring extraneous information. If we can cut that out for our students, really cut the fluff so to speak, we can really minimize the stress on the working memory, which is going to allow the students to learn much more about the subject.

• The results of two research syntheses and one meta-analysis suggest that graphic organizers increase comprehension for students with learning disabilities across all grade levels.
  (Dexter & Hughes, 2011; Gajria, Jitendra, Sood, & Sacks, 2007; Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek, & Wei, 2004)
• Graphic organizers, proven effective for students with and without learning disabilities across all grade levels, can improve reading comprehension and writing skills and increase learning in content areas.
  (Ellis & Howard, 2007)
• Students with learning disabilities and ADHD who used graphic organizers outperformed those who did not use graphic organizers on a test of conceptual understanding of linear equations. This suggests that graphic organizers are effective tools for learning higher-level mathematics.
  (Ives, 2007)
• A meta-analysis shows that middle and high school students with disabilities who used graphic organizers to learn science content displayed increased vocabulary knowledge and comprehension.
  (Dexter, Park, & Hughes, 2011)

Because there are many kinds of graphic organizers, teachers should carefully select those that will best convey the information and relationships they wish for their students to learn. The table below lists several of the most common types of graphic organizers and the purposes for which they can be used. Click on them to learn more as well as to see completed versions of each.

Cause and effect chain

Students can use this type of graphic organizer to clarify the relationship between specific events and the outcomes deriving from them, thus illustrating the concepts of consequences, inevitability, and causality.

Example

Romeo secretly attends the Capulets’ masquerade

Romeo falls in love
with Juliet

Romeo slays Tibalt

The prince banishes Romeo
from Verona

Friar John fails to deliver his message to Romeo

Romeo falsely believes
Juliet to be dead

Problem and solution map

Obstacles, hindrances, and malfunctions often have a number of different possible solutions, and this type of graphic organizer can be an effective way to help students better visualize which of those will be most effective.

Cause
Longer than usual period without rain

Cause
Population growth increases demand for water

Problem
Citywide water supply shortage

Solutions

1. Fine residents for overuse of water
2. Purchase water from neighboring states
3. Offer subsidies to farms and industry to limit water use
4. Create program to encourage homeowners to use water more responsibly

Result

Combined, these approaches help the city to make it through the remainder of dry summer months.

Fishbone diagram

Also called an Ishikawa diagram (after its inventor), this type of graphic organizer can be used to show a range of complex causes and interactions that lead to specific events.

Example

This fishbone graphic organizer illustrates the various primary causes of World War I: Competition Among Nations, Diplomatic Errors, Complex Alliances, and Foreign Policy Events. Secondary causes of the war branch out from each primary cause. The secondary causes that fall under Competition Among Nations are Arms Race and Territorial Disputes. The secondary causes falling under Diplomatic Errors are Delayed Communications and Assumption of Bad Faith. The secondary causes that fall under Complex Alliances are Franco-Russian and Dual Alliance. Finally, the secondary causes falling under Foreign Policy Events are Balkan Wars and Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.

Web

Students can use a web to categorize or classify items.

Example

In this web graphic organizer, the central term “literature” is divided into a pair of major categories: “fiction” and “nonfiction.” These categories, in turn, are broken into more specific units. “Nonfiction” leads to “autobiography,” “essay,” and “history.” “Fiction,” meanwhile, spreads out to “novels,” “short stories,” and “poetry.” The term “novels” becomes more specific yet, breaking down to genre categories like “fantasy,” “science fiction,” and “mystery.”

Classification table

Students can use this simple organizer to sort or classify information or objects into different categories.

Example

Venn diagram

Named after their creator, Venn diagrams are a type of graphic organizer used to show the overlapping relationships between various categories of ideas, things, events, mathematical expressions, or logical concepts.

Example

The primary nations that made up the Central Powers of World War I and Axis alliance of World War II

Compare-contrast matrix

Students can use this type of graphic organizer to clarify what is the same and what is different about the selected people, places, or objects.

Example

Word web

Word webs are graphic organizers that help students to better understand a key vocabulary term by connecting it to related terms.

Example

This vocabulary graphic organizer depicts different aspects of a word. In the center of the graphic organizer Today’s Word is listed. Today’s Word is “happy.” Under the word is the definition of happy: “having, displaying, or marked by pleasure or joy, adj.” Under the definition of happy are three examples of Today’s Word in sentences. The first example is “When I am happy, I smile.” The second example is “Winning at checkers makes me happy.” The third example is “The happy birds were singing a cheerful song.” To the left of Today’s Word are three synonyms for happy. The synonyms are “glad,” “pleased,” and “joyful.” To the right of Today’s Word are three antonyms for happy. The antonyms are “sad,” “miserable,” and “gloomy.”

Frayer Model

This type of graphic organizer is used to help students develop more comprehensive vocabulary skills by offering not only a definition and examples of what a given person, place, event, or thing is but also a definition and examples of what those things are not.

Example

Triangle

Definition

Characteristics

Examples

Non-Examples

A basic geometric shape; a closed plane form having three sides and three angles.

A triangle is a three-sided polygon with three vertices (or sides).

scalene, equilateral, isosceles

square (four equal sides), octagon (eight sides), circle (no sides)

Semantic map

Teachers can use semantic maps to help students to better understand the ways in which words, categories, and concepts are related to one another. This organizer is a type of web that allows students to add in descriptive information about the content.

Example

A semantic map illustrates some of the ways in which words, categories, and concepts are related to one another. In this version of such a map, the key term “vertebrates” is surrounded by a number of specific examples: “amphibians,” “reptiles,” “fish,” “mammals,” and “birds.” Descriptive information has been added beside each of these examples. For example, “amphibians” has been annotated to read “cold-blooded, born in water, no scales.” “Reptiles” reads “cold-blooded, scales, born on land.” “Fish” says “only live in water, have gills and fins.” “Mammals” reads “warm-blooded, babies drink milk, hair on body.” Finally, “birds” is annotated “feathers.”

Flowchart

This common type of graphic organizer breaks down the important steps in a process or sequence and can be used to solve problems or clarify multipart procedures.

Example

Have you developed a thesis for your paper?

Create a clear, straight-forward statement of what your essay is about.

Have you located references and resources for your paper?

Locate books, journals, and newspaper articles.

Have you created an outline for your paper?

Break your essay into parts to create a smoother and more logical flow of information.

Begin writing.

Series of events chain

Similar to a timeline of events, this type of graphic organizer can be used to demonstrate how a linear sequence leads to a specific outcome.

Example

Odysseus and his men land on the Island of Cyclopes.

They are soon captured by Polyphemus and trapped in his cave.

Odysseus affects an escape, blinding Polyphemus as part of the ruse.

Polyphemus prays to Poseidon, who greatly lengthens Odysseus’ journey home.

Cycle

This variety of graphic organizer can help students to more fully comprehend series of events or phenomena that take on recurrent patterns.

Example

Timeline

This simple and familiar type of graphic organizer arranges events in chronological order to help students better grasp the relationship between historical occurrences or developments.

Example

This timeline graphic is shaped like a double-headed arrow and is divided into single-year increments, a few of which are labeled with some of the major events leading up to the American Revolutionary War. Beginning with 1765, the timeline highlights the Stamp Act then proceeds to similarly spotlight the Boston Massacre in 1770, the Boston Tea Party in 1773, the First Continental Congress in 1774, and the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Douglas Dexter discusses the importance of consistently using the same graphic organizer for similar tasks (e.g., comparing and contrasting), what he refers to as the “verbal structure” of the lecture or text (time: 2:06).

Douglas Dexter, PhD
Assistant Professor of Special Education
The Pennsylvania State University

View Transcript

Transcript: Douglas Dexter, PhD

I think it’s very important that teachers pick out graphic organizers based on the verbal structure of their lecture or their text. It doesn’t matter which one you pick. The big idea is as long as you are making those relationships very clear and very explicit, just keep using that same organizer time after time. Then you’re optimizing your instructional time because the students—after you’ve modeled it for them for a while and they’ve gotten some practice with it—they can do that much more independently. And so you’re going to get a lot more time to cover the content, and the students are going to be able to absorb that content again through their working memory. They’re able to encode this information much more efficiently if they are using organizers that they understand. What’s going to happen after several months of using these in the classroom, the students then become much more independent. They become self-reliant, and they become self-regulators, and what we see is they can effectively pick out, and they know which organizer to use. So they can see a text structure, and they can say, “Okay, I see what’s happening here, and this is the organizer that we’ve been using in my class, so I will pick that out.” And the good news here is it’s never too late. Of course it would be wonderful if we got our students thinking in this way even before middle school, but even if I’m teaching an eleventh grade English class or twelfth grade English class, if I introduce this to my students, they’re going to be able to get this and it’s going to benefit them for a very long time. In my longitudinal research, what I find is even when students leave the classrooms that we are in and move up in grades, move up from middle school to high school, they’re going to other classes, and they’re using these same graphic organizers because it really cuts across all of the content areas. And getting students to think this way—and especially our students with learning disabilities and ADHD—really will give them a great benefit and a leg up in being very successful in the secondary level.

Regardless of the graphic organizer the teacher selects, it must clearly demonstrate the relationship between pieces of information.

Click here for feedback.

Activity: Feedback

For this example, we chose to use a compare-contrast matrix to compare and contrast the information in the students’ graphic organizers. The information included highlights some of the main differences, though it should not be seen as all inclusive.

*U.S. National Park Service. (2007). Fact sheet #2: How do sand dunes move?

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