Five Minutes of Faculty Development: Graphic Organizers in the Classroom

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Graphic Organizers in the Classroom

Contributed by Lisa Crizer, Instructor of English, and written about her English & Sociology Learning Community, "'Til Divorce Do Us Part."

One of the things we struggle with in our learning community is something I think every instructor struggles with during a given semester—ensuring that the students are reading the assigned material.

After a few lackluster discussions, Shiela and I decided to try some techniques to encourage students to be a bit more prepared for class and participate more in discussions. One of the activities we incorporated into class was the use of a graphic organizer to help students keep track of what they read and better respond to the material.

The activity asked the students to:

Identify the claim—“What is the key argument being made by the author?”
List some of the data—“What facts does the author present to support his or her claim?”
Interpret the argument—“What is your overall understanding of the author’s argument and what do you think of the piece as a whole?”

We were very pleased with the outcome of this activity. Students were able to formulate their thoughts before class and this was evident in much livelier class discussions. An interesting and unanticipated outcome was that the responses that students gave were pretty varied. Not everyone brought up the same key arguments, and not everyone presented the same data. The variety of responses really added to the class discussion. Overall, this activity was a success and we plan to use it again in our future Learning Community class.

Type "graphic organizers" into Google Images for more results like this one!

How do you ensure that your students are doing the required reading?

Let us know in the Comments section below!