Graphic Organizers Are Not Final Products
If you looked around my classroom, you would have spotted a huge red flag hanging on my walls.
No, not a literal red flag! But a major clue that I was limiting my students’ thinking.
My walls were covered in students’ graphic organizers.
Graphic Organizers Are A Scaffold
But now I know that graphic organizers should not be a final product. They should not hang on walls with grades on them. They are stepping stones. They’re scaffolds. They help students reach a higher level of thinking. Graphic Organizers are not an end point, though.
That would be like writing the storyboards for a movie and then never filming it. Or writing out the chords for a song but never recording it. Or planning a vacation and then framing your plans rather than, you know, taking the darn vacation!!
Graphic Organizers Connect To Bloom’s Taxonomy
All graphic organizers act as a scaffold for a particular level of thinking on Bloom’s Taxonomy. When we use a graphic organizer, it should connect to that level of thinking.
- A plain old circle map supports a low-level brainstorm. “Think of all of the examples of X.” This is a good opener.
- A Venn Diagram helps students reach the Analyze level of thinking. It’s a scaffold for comparing and contrasting.
- A table also makes it easier to Analyze. It’s simpler to compare/contrast or categorize data when its laid out in organized columns.
Venn Diagram
Let’s take our Venn Diagram. It supports comparing and contrasting. But comparing and contrasting must lead to a decision. Analyze naturally moves towards Evaluate. We compare. We contrast. And then we decide!
It would be SUPER weird to compare and contrast vacation spots – but then never pick where you’re going! No one would compare and contrast a Honda Pilot and Toyota Highlander and then stop there. You’d pick a car! based on your Analysis!
So students should never fill in a Venn Diagram and then be done. There’s an obvious next step that takes students higher up Bloom’s Taxonomy. Without that next step, I’d be left wondering, “Gee, why do I have these early finishers again?” (I wrote about the key to early finishers here.)
Compare, Contrast, And Then Choose!
If we use a Venn Diagram to compare a cat and dog, we’re setting them up to then make a choice.
But I don’t want that choice to be something dull like, “Which animal is better?” Instead, let’s ask a sharp evaluative question like, “If you had to survive in your town as one of these animals, which would you choose?” (Here’s how I sharpen questions.)
Then, I need to go back and make sure my Analyze task helps students to answer this sharp question. My Venn Diagram must be about comparing and contrasting the defensive adaptations of a dog and a cat, not just dogs and cats generally.
The Venn Diagram is Part of a Sequence
See how the Venn Diagram is just a scaffold? It’s a part of a larger sequence of questions:
- Compare and Contrast the defensive adaptations of cats vs dogs. (The Venn Diagram is here.)
- Pick which animal you’d rather be if you had to survive in our town.
- Imagine that a dog and cat decide to trade one adaptation for another. Which adaptations would they settle on?
- Write a story starring either the new dog or new cat. They’ll be surviving in town using their new set of adaptations.
Do you see what a disaster it was when I had my class stop at the Venn Diagram? We lost the opportunity to do all of this great thinking! I’d much rather walk into a classroom covered in stories about mutant cat adaptations than dozens of identical Venn Diagrams.