I love graphic organisers, especially if I can get electronic versions of them for my laptop students. There are times when I bring in an A3 version and get students to work in little groups on them. Graphic organisers have stolen the show in 2011 and 2012. They are a teaching must have with laptops. My year 12s used one in little groups to come to grips with a tough film. They all said once they had worked through it the film became more accessible to them. They were typing information on the electronic version and penning information on the group sheet. We then swapped files so we all had each other’s information. The written assignments from that scaffolded approach to learning was far superior to anything I have seen in a while. We were doing it in French so we had to fill out the graphic organisers in French. The concept web left and another version I have of it works really well and students feel – hate using the word empowered – but that is what they feel. A graphic organiser demysifies thinking but it also is a concrete tool to organise thoughts and language. There are some fantastic free ones at Education Place. I thank a colleague for sending me the link.
Filed under: classroom, e-learning, methodology, software, technology | Tagged: e-learning, graphic organisers, scaffolding thinking, Teaching for Effective Learning, visual literacy |
E-WOT 
Sally, this is a great way to engage students and make them work desirably as a group. All social factors come into play when the students compare notes. I love this post.
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Worked well for me and was far more productive than my trying to “teach” the film. I did think carefully about what I put at the centre of the concept webs and they had 3 different ones to do. it worked because of what you said – the social factors and the fact they could compare what they were thinking and so they focussed on the text analysis in a very natural way.
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