How to use graphic organizers for teaching writing, learning, and understanding across the curriculum.

Graphic organizers guide learners’ thinking as they fill in and build upon a visual map or diagram. Graphic organizers are some of the most effective visual learning strategies for students and are applied across the curriculum to enhance learning and understanding of subject matter content. In a variety of formats dependent upon the task, graphic organizers facilitate students’ learning by helping them identify areas of focus within a broad topic, such as a novel or article. Because they help the learner make connections and structure thinking, students often turn to graphic organizers for writing projects. In addition to helping students organize their thinking and writing process, graphic organizers can act as instructional tools. Graphic Organizer Example Definition of a Graphic Organizer A graphic organizer is a visual display that demonstrates relationships between facts, concepts or ideas. Types of Graphic Organizers Concept Maps Concept Map Example Web Example Mind Map Example

Graphic Organizers for Content Instruction One of our roles as ESL and bilingual specialists is to encourage mainstream teachers to employ teaching techniques which make content area information more accessible to second language learners. Content materials present text which is too dense for ELLs. Teach your students to use graphic organizers such as webs, Venn diagrams, and charts to help them better comprehend these texts. These are visual tools that help ELLs understand and organize information. One of our goals in teaching our English language learners is to help them summarize and interpret text. Download the PDF files listed below or try a customized graphic organizer at Teach-nology.com.

Visual Mapping.com Choose Your Product | mywebspiration.com teachervision Graphic organizers help your students visualize and understand concepts more effectively. Print the organizers in this gallery of our Top 10 Most Popular Graphic Organizers, or browse our entire collection of to find ones that meet your class's needs. Help students write five-paragraph essays with a graphic organizer. Use this analogy organizer when teaching new concepts to your class. Use this graphic organizer to describe and order the steps in a process. Use this three-part Venn diagram to identify differences and similarities. This simple KWL chart can be used in all curriculum areas and all grade levels. This graphic organizer will help your students identify the main idea and supporting facts in three paragraphs. Students are asked to identify cause and effect of a story with this graphic organizer. Assign a topic and ask students to complete the grid with as many words as they can think that fit in each square on the topic. Use this graphic organizer to brainstorm.

Graphic Organizers Prepared by Tracey Hall & Nicole Strangman Please visit the AIM Center home page. Introduction One way to help make a curriculum more supportive of students and teachers is to incorporate graphic organizers. Top Definition A graphic organizer is a visual and graphic display that depicts the relationships between facts, terms, and or ideas within a learning task. Types of Graphic Organizers Graphic organizers come in many different forms, each one best suited to organizing a particular type of information. Image description:This graphic organizer is made up of a series of shapes in several rows. Image description:This graphic organizer is entitled "Network Tree" and is made up of a series of ovals of two different sizes. Image description:This graphic organizer is entitled "Spider Map" and is made up of a large, central oval with four sets of black lines extending from it. Image description:This graphic organizer is entitled "Problem and Solution Map" and is made up of a series of boxes.

Make your thinking and planning smarter and faster | Seavus DropMind™ 40 Ultimate Useful Mind Mapping Tools [ad#link-unit-post]Mind Mapping Applications working as powerful in this era for taking notes, capturing ideas, represent words, exploring concepts or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing. Mind Mapping Tools helps in many way of work in this growing and emerging industry, you can use it to study for a big exam, you can use it brainstorm new article ideas as bloggers work, or flesh out what needs to be covered in the business plan for a new venture, you can organize a big move of house, Iâ€™ve seen people use the mind map format for their daily to-do lists too. Hope you all respected visitors and readers like very much and share your views about this article for encouragement. Bubbl.us A flash based brainstorming tool that you can share with others and also embed in to your site. MindMeister WiseMapping Mindomo CmapTools Curio

Graphic Organizer Worksheets Advertisement. EnchantedLearning.com is a user-supported site. As a bonus, site members have access to a banner-ad-free version of the site, with print-friendly pages.Click here to learn more. (Already a member? Click here.) Graphic Organizers Graphic organizers (some of which are also called concept maps, entity relationship charts, and mind maps) are a pictorial way of constructing knowledge and organizing information. Increasing Understanding by Creating Graphic Organizers: The process of converting a mass of data/information/ideas into a graphic map gives the student an increased understanding and insight into the topic at hand. The creation of graphic organizers also helps the student generate ideas as they develop and note their thoughts visually. Uses of Graphic Organizers: Graphic organizers can be used to structure writing projects, to help in problem solving, decision making, studying, planning research and brainstorming.

Free Mind Mapping Software There are a few advantages to creating your mind maps with computer software. Here are a few: It saves time!You can have easy access to picturesNo need for paper and pensIt seems to suit lazy people ;) So it seems great eh? This is because it has been proven that your brain connects to your hand and makes links with what you are writing. So what it all comes down to is this: If you are using mind maps in a work environment to plan, organise and systemise, you may be better of with free mind mapping software. Personally, I prefer drawing but that's just me :) If you think you are going to be using mind maps a lot and would like to have a more advanced and state of the art software with which to create your mind maps, you may want to check out the mind mapping software page. The Software Free MindFree Mind is a basic open source program that can be used with an easy interface to create mind maps. FreePlaneFreePlane is a redesigned version of FreeMind and is also an open source program.

15 Great Mindmapping Tools and Apps Mindmapping is the process of drawing up diagrams that show relations between various ideas, tasks or information. For many of us this shows to actually be a way of taking notes that can be more useful than just writing down keywords or sentences like we do on a to-do list. By drawing mind maps you actually visualize your tasks and how each task can influence each other in a better way, making your brain remember more easily and/or come up with new ideas. The Tools There are various tools for mindmapping out there, both free and paid versions. The ones that require any installation, can be run on all platforms that support Java unless something else is specified. Freemind ↓ I found the application quick to install and very easy to understand, – which is probably why it is one of the more popular. You can download Freemind here. Xmind ↓ Xmind has a more professional business-like look compared to FreeMind. You can download Xmind here. Bubbl.US ↓ Web application. MindMeister ↓ Freeplane ↓ Bookvar ↓

Teaching Ideas One of the most useful techniques for revision I've come across is known as Mind Mapping. I've successfully mind-mapped with many of my GCSE Information Technology and Geography students with some great results (see later). Mind Mapping is a fun way to revise and really does seem to work well. It gives the students much more time to fit in the topics that need to be covered and, I believe, makes revision 'less boring'. So explain Mind Mapping to me! Mind mapping is a graphical way to arrange a topic onto a piece of paper. As you can imagine, Mind Maps can become complex but exciting revision tools which allow the students (and you) to build up links between the main topics of the map. Finally, try Mind Mapping not just as a revision technique but also to fortify your student's notes. Related Sites