Graphic Organizers

Click on the name of the graphic organizer below for a PDF version.

Note: Several of the links include multiple resources and several pages.

Name

Description

Cause and Effect

A series (11 pages) of graphic organizers that use different formats for tracing causes and effects.

CEI

Character Study

A series (22 pages) of graphic organizers for studying the methods of characterization, character traits, and the relationship between character development and conflict.

Compare/Contrast

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An alternative to the traditional Venn Diagram that includes a space for summarizing the compared and contrasted ideas.

Conflict Dissection

A four-column graphic organizer for identifying "someone...wanted...but...so" in order to dissect conflicts that are presented in text.

Cornell Notes (Intro)

A note-taking page that introduces students to the Cornell Notes method with suggestions on the type of information to be included.

Decision Making

Two graphic organizers that help students work through a decision-making process.

A graphic organizer that helps students prepare for a discussion about a text, with prompting questions in the margin that help to guide their thinking.

Event Mapping

A web for charting the who, what, where, when, why and how of a particular event.

A graphic organizer that generates a series of details related to a subject and then moves to a main idea through induction.

Inference Notes

A circular graphic organizer for organizing literal information in the inside wedges of the circle and inferences in the outer wedges of the circle..

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Inference

Text & Subtext

A graphic organizer (2 pages) for analyzing the textual or literal level of meaning and the subtextual or implied meaning for a specific quotation.

Interactive Notes

A model (2 pages) of the interactive note strategy, including the before, during, and after thinking that students should do while reading a text; also includes a blank interactive note-taking page.

Literature Circles

A set of graphic organizers (9 pages) that can be used for the different roles in a literature circle (e.g., discussion director, illustrator, connector, word watcher, summarizer), including bookmarks that remind students of questions they might pose while reading and discussing their book.

Making Predictions

Narrative Writing Tools

A series (13 pages) of graphic organizers for planning to write narratives, including resources for sequencing, conflict, rising action, and imagery.

Persuasive Writing Tools

A series (22 pages) of graphic organizers for developing and organizing ideas and information for persuasive writing or speaking, including planning and note-taking resources for debates.

PreReading Notes

A note taking page with questions in the margin that help students to survey the text, activate prior knowledge, and decide their purpose for reading.

An active reading, listening, or observing graphic organizer that involves note taking, visually representing ideas, and summarizing ideas in writing.

A graphic organizer for representing the hierarchy of a subject, main idea, supporting details, developing details, and summary or synthesis.

QAR:

Question-Answer

Relationships

Q-Notes

Q-Notes combines the strategies of SQ3R and Cornell Notes, and provides a note-taking format for posing questions while reading  in the left-hand margin and writing answers to the questions in the right-hand margin.

Question Generator

A graphic organizer (5 pages) that prompts students to pose their own questions to clarify their initial understanding, develop an interpretation, make connections, and take a critical stance.

Reading Bookmark

A reproducible bookmark that includes questions, strategies, and reminders that students can refer to throughout the reading process.

Revising Writing

Summary Notes

A note-taking page to summarize a reading with before, during, and after reading reminders listed in the left-hand margin.

Text Connections

Text Response Journal Entries

Two journal entry pages that prompt students to make connections between specific textual references and their own ideas/experience.

A graphic organizer (2 pages) that helps students recognize and analyze the features of different textbooks in order to approach the text more strategically.

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Venn Diagram

(2-way)

A traditional two-way Venn diagram with space for synthesizing conclusions, making connections, or posing questions.

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Venn Diagram

(3-way)

A traditional three-way Venn diagram to compare and contrast three ideas, characters, events, etc.

Vocabulary Squares

A graphic organizer that can be used to help students understand important vocabulary words or concepts, including space for the etymology of the word, antonyms and synonyms, the definition, a symbolic representation of the word, and space for using it in a sentence.

Before

During

After

Reading Strategy

Description

Annolighting
A Text

This active reading strategy links concept of highlighting key words and phrases in a text and annotating those highlights with marginal notes.  

Annotating
A Text

Annotating a text is an effective strategy to promote active and critical reading skills; this strategy provides a number useful acronyms that students can use to remember different elements of writer's craft when reading and annotating a text.

Anticipation
Guide

Anticipation guides are typically used as a pre-reading strategy and help to engage students in thought and discussion about ideas and concepts that they will encounter in the text.

Students participate in regularly scheduled meetings of groups who meet over time to discuss books they read and strategies they use.

Checking out the Framework

This strategy provides students with suggestions for previewing texts of different genre in order to read strategically based on their purposes for reading the text.

Collaborative Annotation

This strategy engages students in a process of co-constructing their interpretations of a text through a collaborative annotation activity.

Conversations
Across Time

This reading strategy helps students to develop deeper insights by making connections between and across texts from different time periods in response to a common topic, theme, or essential question.

Dense Questioning

The dense questioning strategy can be used to help students pose increasingly dense questions as they make text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to-world connections.

Frame of Reference

The frame of reference strategy teaches students how to create a mental context for reading a passage; this is accomplished by helping students to consider what they know about a topic and how they know what they know.

Model and practice asking questions. 

Inferential
Reading

The inferential reading strategy provides a list of the various types of inferences that readers make while reading even seemingly straightforward text; recognizing that there are different types of inferences helps students to analyze text more consciously and strategically.

Interactive
Notebook

This highly adaptable strategy encourages students to use a two-column note-taking strategy.  In the right column, they take notes to synthesize essential ideas and information from a text, presentation, film etc.; in the left-hand column, they interact with the content in any way they choose (personal connections, illustrations, etc.).

Key Concept Synthesis

The key concept synthesis strategy helps students to identify the most important ideas in a text, put those ideas into their own words, and then make connections between among these important ideas

Listening to Voice

This strategy helps students to analyze and interpret writer's voice through the annotation of a passage, with particular emphasis on dictions, tone, syntax, unity, coherence, and audience.

Metaphor Analysis

This adaptable strategy teaches students how to analyze a complex metaphor and substantiate interpretive claims using textual evidence.

Parallel
Note-taking

The parallel note-taking strategy teaches students to recognize different organizational patterns for informational texts and then develop a note-taking strategy that parallels the organization of the text.

Students pause during their reading to sketch an immediate impression, image, or question from the text.

Students receive ten key words from the passage.  They sort the words into setting, character, problem, outcomes and unknown words.  From the sort students make predictions about the text.

QAR:
Question-Answer Relationships

The QAR strategy helps students to identify the four Question-Answer Relationships that they are likely to encounter as they read texts and attempt to answer questions about what they have read.  These include "right there" questions, "think and search" questions, "author and you" questions, and "on my own" questions. 

Questions Only

The questions only strategy teaches students how to pose questions about the texts they are reading and encourages them to read actively as they work to answer the questions they have posed. 

RAFT

This is a flexible post-reading strategy that helps students to analyze and reflect upon their reading through persona writing.  Based on suggestions provided by the teacher or generated by the class, students choose a Role, an Audience, a Format, and a Topic on which to write in response to their reading.

Reciprocal
Teaching

The reciprocal teaching strategy enables students to activate four different comprehension strategies - predicting, questioning, clarifying, summarizing - which they apply collaboratively to help each other understand a text they are reading.

Sociograms

A sociogram is a visual representation of the relationships among characters in a literary text.  Students can make use of pictures, symbols, shapes, colors, and line styles to illustrate these relationships, to understand the traits of each character, and to analyze the emerging primary and secondary conflicts.

Teacher prepares up to six key quotes from the text to be read.  Students are all given one quote that they share with other students in the classroom.  In small groups students construct predictions about the text. 

Think Aloud

Skillful readers unconsciously use a range of strategies to make meaning from text.  The think aloud strategy involves modeling these strategies by "thinking aloud" while reading and responding to a text.  By making explicit for students what is implicit for more expert readers, it becomes possible for students develop and apply these strategies themselves.

Transactional Reading Journal

The name of this reading strategy is inspired by the work of Louise Rosenblatt (1978), who explained reading as a transactional process that occurs between the text and the reader.  The Transactional Reading Journal builds on this concept (via Jude Ellis) and provides a flexible framework for engaging students in a process of active and personally meaningful interaction with a text.

This reading strategy teaches students how to analyze text through close reading in order to formulate a interpretive thesis that is supported through assertions and textual evidence.  Students present their interpretations to the class through a seminar format.