Using Graphic Organizers to Develop Thinking Skills, K-12

Graphic organizers provide a clear and easy-to-understand reflection of how the brain sorts and connects learning, allowing teachers to spot gaps in student understanding. This collection of classic and newly created graphic and three dimensional organizers will give teachers new tools and new ways to use them to teach, assess, and help students grow in understanding of their own thinking. All are presented in the creative, accessible trademark style that has made these experts such effective authors and coaches.

This book will give teachers and curriculum leaders tools to:

• incorporate a strategy endorsed by proponents of brain compatible learning

• activate students′ prior knowledge

• enable students to make their thinking visible to both themselves and their teachers

• surface strengths and gaps in understanding

• recognize learner preferences, cognitive styles, and multiple intelligences

• structure, assess and document student work in cooperative groups

• help students connect new knowledge to old to make learning more lasting

Numerous examples, lists of potential applications and strategies for maximizing their value allow for easy application of the method in the classroom. Guidance for developing specialized teacher and student created organizers further increase the usefulness for differentiated classrooms.

Chapman and King make instructional improvement lively, energizing, easy to adopt, and classroom-friendly.