Disciplinary Literacy, Pt 3 - Organizing Information
PT 3 - ORGANIZING INFORMATION
Strategy three in our Disciplinary Literacy series finds us looking at the invaluable tool of organizing information!
Remember, we are moving beyond general literacy strategies and using specialized literacy strategies; that can mean we're taking something seen as a general literacy strategy (like organizing information) and adapting it for the specific discipline needs we have.
So far we’ve looked at:
"What ________ Do" anchor charts
Modeling/Teacher “Think Aloud” (and how we bring expertise to the classroom)
and now we’re looking at
Organizing Information, and how to help our students understand how to do that in our discipline.
Organizing Information vs. Graphic Organizers
When I say organizing information and we look at the strategy, many of you may think, "That's graphic organizers."
Can I encourage you here that the way we consider language is really important? Some may say, "Oh, Teresa, that's just semantics," but I think there are definitely times when semantics are important. If, in my classroom, I say we are going to use a graphic organizer, here's what I found in following up with my students and digging into their thinking and their learning:
When I say we're going to use a graphic organizer, often what they see when I put it in front of them is a worksheet - something to be done to comply with the request (and to keep Miss Bunner off my back in class).
If, instead, we present it as, “We are going to organize our learning and thinking," then suddenly there's a very different purpose to that graphic organizer, that piece of paper we're going to put in front of our students. Because that's really what a graphic organizer is about, right? It's about collecting our learning and our thinking and organizing it in a certain way...
I'm inviting you to consider that semantics switch in your own thinking as you consider how to utilize something like a graphic organizer to help your students organize their learning and thinking.
What does that look like in our classrooms?
So how does this look, practically the classroom? Let me share a lesson I’ve used in my classroom multiple times for the strategy of organizing our learning and thinking.
I start off by asking myself, “What is my purpose in this particular lesson?”
For this lesson, I was looking at the standard (CCS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.2) of determining a central idea of a text, analyzing its development over the course of a text, and then providing an objective summary of the text. That’s a big standard with a lot of parts to consider as I think about how to help my students unpack that standard and grasp the skill set that goes along with mastering it. I then chose an article that would fulfill this purpose well. In this case, my students were reading an article "How the Internet Is Loosening Our Grip on the Truth". (Thank you, New York Times, for allowing teachers to access great articles for use in our classrooms.)
This standard works well for the strategy of organizing information because you can see three very distinct actions and there are a number of subskills that they will gain as well. I was asking my students to determine the author's central idea, how he supports that idea (“analyze its development over the course of the text”) and then I had them summarize the article.
Now I'm thinking about how to partner some sort of organizer for my students that will help them draw out their thinking and their learning so they can demonstrate their mastery of this standard. In this case I had my students do a couple different things:
First Read
Teacher will model Think Aloud/Talking to the Text
Students will then complete the article on their own, marking unknown words, confusions, connections, and important ideas.
I had them do a first read and I went back to our “think aloud” strategy. I modeled my thinking for my students with the first section of the text. I shared the things I noticed as I began to pull out key ideas in the text. And then my students completed the article on their own where we left off, doing annotation and “talking to the text” as my friends at Reading Apprenticeship call it.
Second Read
Students will utilize 8-square notetaking to track progression of information in the article and to summarize.
Now that they were familiar with the text, this is where I wanted them break it down and think about, "What is the central idea?" "How does the author develop the central idea?" and then, "What is the summary of this particular text?" I created an 8-square note taking sheet for them to utilize that was specifically designed for this text. You can see (below) that I broke it down for them by chunking the text. There were four sections to this text with subtitles.
Chunking the text is a strategy that helps my students slow down a little and they see the key ideas/areas of this particular text. This is where they would jot down what they saw as the main ideas or the key points that the author talked about in each of those sections.
I also wanted them to think about any questions they still had at the end of each section. I always encourage my students that it is okay to have questions. We don't have to understand absolutely everything. Those questions may make connections in our minds that help us learn better. Then the students summarized each section of the text in a one-sentence summary in order to begin moving towards that objective summary of the text as a whole. You’ll notice there’s a space at the bottom of the 8-square sheet for them to the summary of the entire text in their own words.
I always encourage my students that it is okay to have questions.
Here’s why this is so worth the extra time and effort: instead of only telling them to “take notes,” or saying, “Here’s a generic note taker. Take notes in whatever way works for you,” I specifically designed an organizer that would help them break down the task, be able to access the text, and pull out the information that was going to be needed so they could master that standard of gathering the central idea, how it was developed by the author, and objectively summarizing the article.
There are a lot of ways for you to organize information across your disciplines. Here are a few you may find helpful:
Rock Types Organizer - This lesson plan from NASA has students identifying rock types and gathering descriptions. They have an organizer to help them gather their thinking and learning. There are a whole series of lesson plans that go with this.
Fine Arts Lesson Plan with organizer - In this great lesson plan from the Smithsonian Institute, students look closely at a piece of jewelry as art and break down what parts they see in the piece of artwork. They’re asked, “What do you think the purpose is of that part? What connections can you make?”
Reading Math Problems - I love this organizer because it combines not only the reading of the math problem, but speaking, listening, and collaboration standards so students work together, reading the problem out loud with a partner. When answering, “What is the problem about?” they're reading the problem again and they're talking about questions. All through this process they are gathering their thinking and their learning in this organizer.
So here’s a summary of how to carry out Strategy #3 - Organizing Information
Identify your standard and your learning objective.
Establish your purpose for the text lesson.
Choose or create a graphic organizer that supports the standard/objective that learning.
Model and use gradual release structure for students.
If you're thinking to yourself, "Teresa, I don't have time all the time to be creating these graphic organizers," just scroll down to the links I’ve provided below and you’ll see one for Generic Graphic Organizers. You can start there and adapt as needed.
And then also here's one thing that I have learned from trusting my students. After I have taught them various ways that we can organize our thinking and learning my students can actually begin to design thinking and learning organizers for themselves that work to help them. And that work to shape their learning around the standard.
If you already use some organizers in your classroom, I hope you’ll share your great insights with your colleagues by commenting below. If you try the strategy, please come back and tell me how it worked. Let me know what worked for you. Let me know if you have questions after implementing it.
And don’t forget to visit us on Facebook! (TSB Education Partners LLC)
Until next week…
LINKS TO GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS
Rocking the Rock Cycle (NASA)
Thinking Through Craft: Making Connections (Fine Arts)
Reading and Understanding a Mathematics Problem (Math)
REFERENCES
Cherry, Gamaliel. “Classroom Content & Lesson Plans.” NASA, NASA, 27 Sept. 2016, www.nasa.gov/langley/education/classroom.
“Graphic Organizers.” AVID Open Access, 30 June 2023, avidopenaccess.org/resource/graphic-organizers/.
Reading and Writing in the Disciplines - Annenberg Learner, www.learner.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Reading-and-writing-in-the-disciplines-overview-Key-Topics-Charts.pdf. Accessed 30 Aug. 2023.
“Talking to the Text Inquiry .” Reading Apprenticeship, readingapprenticeship.org/resource/teacher-team-tool-5-06/. Accessed 30 Aug. 2023.
“Thinking through Craft: Making Connections.” Smithsonian American Art Museum, americanart.si.edu/education/k-12/resources/thinking-through-craft/connections. Accessed 30 Aug. 2023.