Advance Organizers
What is an advance organizer?
An advance organizer is a tool that helps your students understand new information by connecting it to already existing knowledge. Prior to delving into a topic or lesson, have students complete an advance organizer. Many advance organizers are graphic, but you can also use text-based formats.
Why should you use an advance organizer?
Advance organizers:
- allow you to assess students' prior knowledge
- help students organize what they already know
- pull relevant information into working memory, allowing students to connect new information with existing information (known as priming)
- give students a tool that for reflection and metacognition
How to use advance organizers?
Some types of advance organizers, such as narrative, expository, and skimming, focus on previewing and organizing new information before presentation. This guide focuses on organizers that tap into students' prior knowledge such as analogies and metaphors, graphic organizers, and Know-Wonder-Learn (KWL) charts.
Analogies and Metaphors
If you're teaching a complex topic that you want to help break down into simpler parts, you can use an analogy or metaphor with an everyday object or something familiar to most students. For example, if you're teaching about the brain and memory, computers are often used as metaphors. If you're teaching about the eye, you could use a camera as a metaphor. Start by asking students what they already know about the analogy or metaphor, then connect the new concept to their existing knowledge to enhance understanding.
Graphic organizers can help students compare and contrast, show relationships, illustrate order or process, and categorize information. Examples include:
- comparison and contrast chart
- concept maps
- venn diagram
- fishbone
- flow charts
- chains
- cycle
AI resources to create your own graphic organizers include Napkin.ai, which we used to make the above graphic organizer example.
Know-Wonder-Learn (KWL)
A K-W-L chart is an advanced organizer that helps you identify students’ background knowledge. Ask students to divide a sheet of paper into three columns: K, W, and L.
K = What you already KNOW;
W = What you WANT to know;
L = What did you LEARN.
Students fill in K and W columns before beginning the lesson. Ask students to share their responses before beginning the lesson. The L column is filled in at the end of the lesson and can be collected as a tool to know what students took away from the day’s lesson.
K |
W |
L |