Graphic organisers are a visual tool for organising information and encouraging critical thinking. They come in many forms, such as mind-maps and spider diagrams. Indeed, the idea of graphic organisers have been around for a long time, they just haven’t always been known by this name.
Each type of graphic organiser is better suited for certain types of thinking and therefore knowledge of a range of organisers is needed. There really is no one-size-fits-all graphic organiser – they are all different and need to be treated and used differently.
What are the benefits?
Whatever you call these tools, there are several benefits that we ought to consider.
- The use of a graphic organiser forces a student to slow down and actively consider their thinking. This forces students to move from being a tacit learner to being an aware learner (Manoli & Papadopoulou, 2012).
- Graphic organisers can support the formation of schemata through developing an understanding of how different pieces of knowledge link together, deepening a student's learning and understanding (Ausubel, 1968).
- Graphic organisers, where used for retrieval, are an effective tool for supporting the encoding of knowledge into long-term memory as well as the retrieval of knowledge from long-term memory (Ausubel, 1960).
- As graphic organisers are very effective at chunking knowledge (as I will demonstrate later), they reduce the intrinsic load of tasks. This should, in theory, improve the learning outcomes of students (Dye, 2000).
- Graphic organisers are superb at supporting the development of metacognitive abilities. As shown by the Education Endowment Foundation, metacognitive development has the potential to improve student attainment by up to seven additional months across a year’s study (Quigley et al, 2021).
- Due to their visual nature, graphic organisers are an example of effective dual-coding (Jiang & Grabe, 2007; Tang, 1992).
When do we use them?
Knowing when you should use a graphic organiser is just as vital as the why. As mentioned, graphic organisers are hugely powerful tools when we are retrieving information – whether during a lesson or for more formal revision at home. But there are other times when a graphic organiser can be used.
They can be a method of low-stakes assessment – perhaps a quick starter to the lesson (Davis, 1994) or used in an exit ticket type way.
They can be used to support problem-solving and there are several organisers which offer useful “planning” templates to help students break-down tasks and improve output.
As a culmination of many of these uses, student metacognitive skills will improve. In fact, one of the most common strategies I talk about when delivering CPD on metacognition is around the use of graphic organisers, especially for planning and monitoring.
Caution
As with any strategy, we need to be aware of mis-steps – things that we need to avoid in order to improve implementation and avoid lethal mutation away from (effective) theory. This is no different for graphic organisers.
The first consideration is the knowledge that students have and which we could reasonably expect them to recall. Provide students with a graphic organiser that is too complex to complete, especially based on knowledge retrieval, and you have a missed learning opportunity.
Second, is the graphic organiser type. Each type supports a different type of thinking, and therefore choosing the correct type to support the thinking that you want students to be focusing on is crucial.
Third, considering how the graphic organiser fits in with the wider body of work is helpful. Is it a one-off sheet that gets thrown away or glued into books, or does it perhaps sit as the planning sheet for a future task?
In my experience, where these organisers lead to something else, outcomes are better. If there is no rationale for the work (i.e. if it doesn’t sit in a wider web of learning), it could feel like a throw-away task that a student doesn’t need to fully focus on.
Fourth, a graphic organiser will not generate streams of writing; they aren’t going to replace full essays. They provide short, sharp ways of recording information and prioritising different types of thinking. They are useful planning documents and can support (metacognitive) monitoring of a task, but they do not constitute a whole problem or task in and of themselves.
Finally, I would never try to introduce a new type of graphic organiser with new content. If we consider the basics of cognitive load, we need to be reducing input to small, single steps. Trying to deliver new content with a new graphic organiser structure is a recipe for confusion and limited learning. Rather, introduce new learning with a known organiser – indeed introduce or a new graphic organiser with content students are familiar with.
My favourite organisers!
There are 10 organisers that I usually talk about during CPD on this topic. You can easily find out more about any of the above via a quick online search.
- Circle map: Used for defining within a context.
- Bubble map: Used for (concise) description.
- Double bubble map: Used for compare and contrast.
- Flow map: Used for sequences (of events).
- Multi-flow map: Used for cause and effect.
- Fishbone: Used for causation.
- Tree map: Used for classification (related).
- Brace maps: Used for constituent parts of one thing.
- Bridge map: Used for analogies.
- Frayer model: Used for research into one idea.
Although I love all these organisers, and all do suit different subjects and different types of thinking at different points, I do have my favourites which I’d like to expand on here.
The double-bubble map
This organiser – which is like a bubble map but with two central concepts – has a lot going for it. Across many subjects, students are often required to compare different factors, ideas and strategies and find commonalities as well as differences. This organiser lends itself just as nicely to maths (common factors) as it does English (character trait comparison), for example.
Once completed, we can use the outcomes of this organiser easily to inform a longer write up. Depth can be added by introducing a third factor (making it a triple-bubble map)!
Equally, from a metacognitive perspective, it is a great tool to compare different strategies, allowing students to see what is the same and what is different about alternative task approaches.
Flow map
This organiser is very well known and well used. It is perhaps the best to support task completion. As an organiser which sequences events, it is a brilliant tool to help students understand the stages that they need to take when completing a task. It provides a great scaffold, especially for students with processing difficulties. Moreover, it is a wonderful technique to support metacognitive monitoring.
Elsewhere, the flow map could be used to synthesis information (for example the stages in the formation of a waterfall) or even to stimulate discussion (what events did/didn’t you include)?
Fishbone
I love the fishbone diagram because of the depth that students can go to when using it. Focusing on the causes of an event, this organiser is unlimited in the number of factors that can be considered.
Equally, depth can be added by breaking down each of the larger fishbones into smaller bones. It is a wonderful tool to plan out longer pieces of writing and it can be used to inform group or class discussions around different factors. It is also a helpful tool when writing up scientific experiments.
A useful pdf advising how to use the fishbone for root cause analysis can be found here.
Frayer Model
If I had to choose just one organiser, it would be the Frayer Model. If you don’t know it, it uses a four-square structure to clarify or analyse word meanings.
The Frayer Model focuses on studying one word at a time with a prescribed technique and sequence to analyse and decipher the meaning and structure of the unknown word. Photographs or illustrations may also be added to help visualise the word.
The target word is written in a central circle and each of the four squares is used to note specific things. The four categories often used – definition, characteristics, examples, non-examples – provide the opportunity for a deep learning experience (especially when considering non-examples).
Furthermore, this is an organiser that can be used for all subjects and it provides a great low-stakes, open-ended assessment opportunity to help students self-evaluate or to inform the teacher’s future planning.
Final thoughts
Graphic organisers have the potential to be a very helpful tool in the classroom. They can support retrieval, planning and monitoring skills, as well as metacognitive abilities. But using the correct organiser to complement the type of thinking you want to see is imperative to maximising their effectiveness.
- Nathan Burns is an education writer and a former head of maths and pastoral leader.
Further information & resources
- Ausubel: The use of advance organizers in learning and retention of meaningful material, Journal of Educational Psychology (51), 1960.
- Ausubel: Educational psychology: A cognitive view, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968.
- Davis: Effects of prereading story mapping on elementary readers’ comprehension, Journal of Educational Research (87), 1994.
- Dye: Graphic organisers to the rescue! Teaching Exceptional Children (32, 3), 2000.
- Garvey & Moran: Using graphic organisers in teaching and learning, Second Level Support Service (1-64), 2008.
- Jiang & Grabe: Graphic organizers in reading instruction: Research findings and issues, Reading in a Foreign Language (19), 2007.
- Manoli & Papadopoulou: Graphic organizers as a reading strategy: Research findings and issues, Creative Education (3,3), 2012.
- Quigley, Mujis & Stringer: Metacognition and self-regulated learning: Guidance report, Education Endowment Foundation, 2021: https://buff.ly/3wlAMCh
- Stull & Mayer: Learning by doing versus learning by viewing: Three experimental comparisons of learner-generated versus author-provided graphic organizers, Journal of Educational Psychology (99,4), 2007.
- Tang: The effect of graphic representation of knowledge structures on ESL reading comprehension, Studies in Second Language Acquisition (14), 1992.