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Graphic Organizers & Visual Timelines

Tags

ELA: Writing Study Skills & Tools ^Music, Art and Makerspaces ^21st Century Skills All Ages Strategy

Skills

Flexible Thinking Organization Working Memory Verbal Reasoning Verbal Memory Abstract Reasoning Visual Memory

Graphic Organizers & Visual Timelines

If your student struggles to organize and communicate ideas in a logical sequence

Instruction And Practice

  1. Objective: Students will use visual tools that help them organize sequential and related information, enabling them to more effectively organize, connect and remember related ideas.
  2. Introduce graphic organizers and other visual tools by working through examples of each. Once students have the hang of the various tools, help them decide what works best for them for planning and organizing their ideas. Exposure to different methods is important.
  3. Graphic organizers are a visual representation of how ideas connect and relate. They can help students generate and organize ideas as well as help them see similarities and relationships between concepts in all subjects. An umbrella format for the main idea with details underneath, or a circle approach with the main idea in the center circle and at least three supporting details in smaller, connected circles surrounding the main idea are two different ways to visually organize ideas.
  4. Visual timelines are a type of graphic organizer, better for linear information, such as planning a sequence of events or mapping out plot of a story.
  5. Digital options can be good for revising and easier to interpret using standard shapes and typed text. Pre-populated visual timelines can be useful for understanding and remembering historical events. Additional tools used by older students include flow charts, fishbone charts, and V diagrams to map out their thinking.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

Some students, particularly for those with stronger visual memory or abstract reasoning, naturally understand better when they can visualize connections and relationships. The process of converting linear text into spatially arranged text forces students to understand and link main ideas and supporting details (Fiorella and Mayer (2016). Research also shows that providing students with the organizational structure but letting them fill-in the notes can help improve their understanding of what they hear in class.

Best-suited for students with weaker: Attention, Inhibition, Long-term Memory, Metacognition, Reasoning, Short Term Memory, Processing Speed, Working Memory (Source: Digital Promise Learner Variability Project)