Unit 4: Activity 3-Types/Purposes of Graphic organizers for Writing

(1) The Spider Graphic Organizer

Spider graphic organizers are useful to help students understand how main ideas can have several related ideas or issues. The details associated with these ideas are displayed on the organizer as well.

(2) Herring /Fish Bone Organizer

The Fish bone organizer is a great tool for students to organize ideas about the text structures: cause and effect and problem/solution that are common to expository writing. Students learn that one effect (outcome) can have several causes and  likewise, one problem can have several solutions.

(3) The Storyboard/Chain of Events Graphic Organizer

This graphic organizer enables students to ascertain a logical flow of ideas for narrative and descriptive types of writing. It can also be used to describe process in expository writing. The aim of this approach is to get students to realize the importance of structural coherence to the reader. The reader who is kept in mind should not get lost or confused during reading  or be left hanging due to gaps in the story or irrelevant details.

(4) Venn Diagram Graphic Organizer

Venn Diagrams are used to compare and contrast seemingly dissimilar ideas. They also single out overlapping ideas.This is a very popular graphic organizer among secondary school students in St.Lucia because it is normally introduced to students during Mathematics class in Grade 8 or 9 when covering the topic of Sets in Algebra.  Since most students would have already been familiar with it, then teacher may have students demonstrate knowledge of how to use it much more than him or her doing so during the modelling process for e.g on the blackboard. 

(5) Problem/Solutions Graphic Organizer

This is a great tool for expository writing as deciphering the feasibility of solutions to problems becomes a much easier task through visual representation. It also prevents one-track thinking. It is suitable for use in paired, small group or independent activities. Organizing tool for higher order activities such as debates and panel discussions which provide structured ideas for writing.

(6) Cycle Graphic Organizer

Useful for reinforcing that parts of  a story link to the rest (events or issues are cyclic). Thus each sentence in a paragraph must be cohesive with the rest to covey intended meaning.All paragraphs must be logically sequenced and structurally coherent so that the story achieves the level of appeal to audience that the writer intended.

(7)Cluster Graphic Organizer

I see clustering for brainstorming about a topic to be a whole class or large group activity because the aim is for students to understand how diverse perspectives on issues, events, categories and items can be grouped based on similarities that correspond to the main idea. This can generate a lot of discussion and justification of group choices and how they relate to main idea, as well as assessing whether interrelationships between constituents of each cluster as true or false. I see this as time consuming, tedious process which is not suitable for below average or some average learners because it requires critical thought process which may be lacking in these types of learners.

(8) The Compare/Contrast Graphic Organizer

I do not like this graphic organizer. I find the Venn Diagram to be more representative of a tool for comparing and contrasting.  Nevertheless, I could make a hybrid of the two whereby  I insert all those tabs in the left hemisphere, the intersection and the right hemisphere of the Venn Diagram to give students more space to write their ideas and to improve the neatness of their presentation.

(9)The KWL Graphic Organizer

The KWL chart is a very popular graphic organizer which uses questioning strategies to tap into students metacognition about planning for their first draft. Since it uses the questioning strategy it i suitable for multiple writing genres.The first two categories What do I already know about this subject  and What do I want to learn about this subject  are for use before reading or discussion about subject student wants to write about. The last category is for use after reading or discussion i.e. What did I learn about this subject. I would modify this chart though to include the "H" (for use after reading or discussion) which stands for How will you learn more about this subject.Some students may want to do additional research like consulting a dictionary, thesaurus, conducting online search etc to re/define their topics and to get more information to clarify level of understanding and meaning about the topic and its pertinent issues.

(10)The 5Ws and an H Graphic Organizer

The questioning strategy to organize logical, sequential and cohesive thoughts is the central premise of this graphic organizer. It asks the same sort of questions that news reporters ask to cover all the relevant details of a story they are covering or an interview conducted. This graphic organizer is useful for students to use in multiple writing genres.It works especially well for narrative (character development, plot development etc) and descriptive writing (logical sequencing of an event as it happens using sensory details, hovering over space and giving descriptive detail from various angles).  It can also be used for authentic assessment of students writing in the planning stages so that the teacher knows that the student is going on the right track.

KNOWING WHY AND HOW TO USE GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS IN THE CLASSROOM

• Graphic organizers are best known for planning writing (prewriting stage) but not for revising.However, Tierney and Pearson (1984) purport that students can revise better if they can see clearly what they are revising.
• Furthermore, students reading skills may inhibit their ability to revise in a text-based modality and thus with visual representation, the process of revising becomes more engaging and easier for the student.

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE CRAFT OF AN EXPERT VS A POOR WRITER

AN EXPERT WRITER  USES KNOWLEDGE TRANSFORMATION  STRATEGIES Is aware of the overall plan and goals for writing which they develop within the constraints (boundaries) of their writing .

A POOR WRITER USES KNOWLEDGE TELLING STRATEGIES Writing is reflective of the writer’s trend of thought  and suggests that the writer has little knowledge of the impact of mental processes that reader goes through as their product is being read.

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN HOW EXPERT VS POOR READERS REVISE THEIR CRAFT

EXPERT WRITERS	POOR WRITERS
Organize, cluster and establish relationships between thoughts and ideas. Their schema contains prior knowledge to aid in this process.	Do not organize, cluster or establish relationships between thoughts and ideas. Their schema does not contain prior knowledge to aid in this process.
Diagnose problems in their writing and make an effort to fix them in the order of global (below the surface) to local (surface errors). However, if lots of problems surface are willing to rewrite the entire paper	Diagnose problems and do not attempt to fix them. They consequently rewrite from a more local perspective where they focus on fixing surface errors.
Flexible processing –Use standard and unconventional approaches to get a more balanced view  (insight) into their writing	Lack innovation in cognitive processing. They simply decode words and use default interpretations to get a balanced view of their writing.

Flower, Hayes,Carey, Schriver and Stratman (1986)

In examining the table above of the revising processes that expert and poor writers engage in, it is evident that expert writers have some knowledge of the use of graphic organizers. The poor writers on the other hand may have no knowledge or have some knowledge which they cannot apply effectively.This plays a big part in the quality of writing that has been produced by these two groups.

GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS AS A VIABLE CHOICE IN SCAFFOLDING REVISION

PERCEPTUAL PROPERTIES

Offloading a “dumptruck” of thoughts and ideas, re-representation and delimitation may help students to better see what they need to revise.

-Tree diagrams, fish bone and matrices have perceptual properties because they provide concise categories of ideas into main ideas, sub-ideas, with explicit interrelationships between them. All information that is required for processing is easily located on such diagrams.

-Outlines or matrices don’t address global but local revision (on the surface). When one fact is found, the other is likely to be located next to it.

-Venn Diagrams facilitate global revision by allowing the writer to compare and contrast ideas or details. -Overall, diagrams provide readers with spatial representations that are often difficult to derive from text only. This is because readers are able to reorganize info in novel ways (Clegarty, Carpenter and Just, 1991)


ADVANTAGES

-Opportunity is provided to reduce cognitive load  i.e. " freedom from  demands of constructing well formed and coherent text" which leads to students ability to concentrate on "comparing, diagnosing and operating" what they want to write concerning the rhetorical problem they wish to answer (Flower and Hayes, 1981)

-Clear representation of the writing plan can lead to better essays. This is because studies have shown positive correlation between the quality of the writing plan and essay scores. Plans that are organized , structured and have beginner and intermediate levels of responses have higher mean essay scores while  plans which are well elaborated including a brief summary of the topic have the highest mean essay scores (Lee, 2007)

FRAMEWORK FOR MULTIPLE REPRESENTATIONS OF GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

DESIGN             Number­-Should be sufficient to meet the level of complexity of the text. Form-Students need to understand the relatedness of ideas in the graphic organizers before they can be used for revision. Task inappropriate graphic organizers interfere with students ’mental conditioning that  graphic organizers can be used to improve difficulties experienced in writing. Information-Information should be distributed coherently, sequentially and should enable formulation of choices when students translate information from one type of representation to another . Sequence-mirrors logical cognitive processing in structuring writing according to genre. Translation­- It should not be difficult for students to read whatever they have from  their diagrams. This is important so that the teacher or peers can understand where their writing plan is headed. It is also important to be able to transfer that information onto another type of representation with ease.

FUNCTION Complementary-Graphic organizers complement each other when they differ in terms of the processes each supports or the information contained. Constraining- Explicit instruction, familiar representation is introduced prior to unfamiliar representations so that students can learn by analyzing. Constructing-Learners integrate information from various representations to construct new knowledge that would be difficult to achieve with only one representation.

COGNITIVE TASK/FEEDBACK -Some of the cognitive activities presented by using graphic organizers are extraneous in nature and are consequently not directed at schema acquisition, however feedback can make the situation much better. Benefits of feedback -exposes students to  a variety of writing styles (Harris and Graham, 1996) -provides practice in distinguishing between useful and useless feedback (Harris, 1992) -the latter helps to build up students declarative and procedural knowledge and metacognitive awareness so  that they will be equipped to evaluate their own writing in the future (Lee, 2007) -feedback from peers or teacher provides students with a mental model of readers resulting in increased awareness of  incongruities between how their ideas are expressed and how the reader perceives those ideas (Schriver, 1992; Berg, 1999)

FOR EFFECTIVE USE OF GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS AS A REVISION TOOL

• Students would have put in a lot of effort to rewrite drafts based on peer or teacher feedback at revision sessions. Therefore there should be  an effort to have revision sessions not only for the first draft but subsequent drafts as well.At these sessions students would be more willing to reread their essays as comfort level between them and their peers increases over time.
• The type and complexity of the tasks students need to perform will determine the distribution of information in graphic organizers. Argumentative writing builds one argument on the basis of another and so complementary and constraining functions are very important . The use of the text structure cause and effect in an expository piece would lend itself to the constructing function.
• Students should be allowed to generate the graphic organizers themselves . Teacher constructed graphic organizers ="sage on the stage" and affect the depth of students' cognitive processing. For e.g. The teacher may have assumed different prior knowledge from the students and  oversimplified the comprehension process by focusing on basic declarative knowledge of facts.
• Students need to be trained in using graphic organizers following the gradual release of responsibility model (teacher models, students work in small groups, teacher monitors and gives advice, scaffolding removed when level of competence or benchmark reached, independent practice follows). If this fails to happen students will have clouded judgement about their usefulness and may be susceptible to making costly errors in their use.
• Training familiarizes students with form and function of the organizers. That previous knowledge of what to look for next when using organizers and where to look for it makes a considerable difference in performance of children who can and cannot use  a particular type of graphic organizer.
• Training and familiarity with graphic organizers is built over a period of time. Ellis (2004) as cited in Lee (2007) suggests that "...students need about 15-20 different meaningful exposures to  a specific graphic organizer before they really begin to understand and internalize it."
• In terms of feedback, it should begin early on in the writing process. Students are generally much more willing to accept comments early in the draft than later when they have already put so much effort into it and having to do immense modification or rewriting frustrates and upsets them. (Ferris, 1995)Furthermore, formative feedback promotes improvement to students' writing by encouraging students to develop their writing skills in multiple genres.