To develop problem solving, decision making, studying, planning and communicating skills

Does the title sound like a medicine for all the illnesses plaguing our education? And for all those ‘employability skills’ which industry is asking? Yes, you are right! And read on, to see how this is possible.

Graphic Organisers (GOs), some of which are also called concept maps, entity relationship charts (rings a bell, computer students?) and mind maps are a pictorial way of constructing knowledge and organising information. They have been used in many good books to convey complex information in a structured way. You are all familiar with flow charts, schematic diagrams etc. But I am going to give you a wider range of these GOs and tell you exactly for what kind of subjects or skills each should be used. They help you convert and compress a lot of seemingly disjointed information into pictures which are simple-to-read and understand. And they develop analytical and creative skills also. When these are prepared either as group work or individually, the learning happens very fast. These can also be used as tools for exam preparation; instead of reading or reviewing entire text, you can just look at these pictures and get a gist of the topic.

Concept Maps: Very similar to a mind map, this is the most fundamental and generic type of GO. In this one writes the concepts learnt in a topic as a bubble – sometimes labeling the lines between the bubbles with relationships like part of, type of etc (instead of having a bubble with causes this can be a label on the arcs joining air pollution and coal plants etc) Mind mapping tools are also available which help you quickly make these pictures. Take a loom at this mind map for exam preparation!

Mind mapping tools are also available which help you quickly make these pictures. Take a loom at this mind map for exam preparation!

Vocabulary chart
This is the most powerful GO which helps you to put all the details of the vocabulary in a subject at one place. For example, look at this for any language. Instead of ‘word’ you could have an element of chemistry and fill up information like atomic weight, atomic number, symbol, properties, where it is found etc around it. Or you could take the biography of a person – date and place of birth, names of parents, great achievements, his picture etc

Fish bone diagram – analytical skills
Ever heard of root cause analysis? Or brainstorming? Or simply problem solving? Well a GO that helps you organise the causes until you find the root cause, looks like a fishbone – hence the name. You can even have more levels of the fishbone, but the last level gives you the root cause and someone may take appropriate action to address the cause. All the possible causes are listed and categorised here.

Compare contrast matrix – evaluation skills
When you study many related or similar topics, very often there are questions in exams about their comparison. Instead of trying to memorise such answers, you can beautifully put this information in a matrix form and review it before the exam. Not just exams, this is a skill which is mostly required in your professional and personal life. Which bike should I buy? Should I rent or buy a house? Such questions can be easily answered by this GO. You can put ticks or yes/no in the boxes – for example, wind probably is not used for transportation but it is renewable and can be used to generate power.

Venn Diagrams
Compare contrast can also be depicted using Venn Diagrams which are very popular and self explanatory.

 Sometimes Venn Diagrams are used to depict hierarchical relationship – most suitable for tree diagram. For example, the following Venn diagram can be also given as a tree.
 

Timeline chart

Don’t you get little tired or bored of remembering historical information? Usually the first chapter of any subject or even the first section of any topic is the early history of that topic. This is useful but difficult to remember. So go ahead and make a timeline chart like this one

 If you search on the internet, you will get many more varieties of Graphic Organisers. Some common types which I have not detailed due to shortage of space are flow charts, cycles (like life cycle of an animal or a product), pie charts and other statistical graphs.

I give guidance and consultancy on how these can be used as teaching and learning aids. You can see a video on how this methodology in class has transformed children in government schools in Tamil Nadu. These children say, “now we don’t have to by heart text books, we understand. And earlier we could only answer questions that were dictated by teacher or given in the book. Now we can answer questions from anywhere in the subject. When you watch the video, you can see the glow on the children’s faces. Remember, the natural instinct of any human being is to understand – not to memorise. Memorising is a stressful process, always worried whether you can recall it. Only because you do not have effective tools or language to understand the subject, you prefer to memorise.

References:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gajJ9huCog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x-kAhh54iw&feature=related
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/graphicorganisers/
http://www.graphic.org/
 
(The author is an expert on teaching learning process and regularly conducts workshops for teachers and students. She is a consultant at Centre for Education Technology and Learning Sciences, IIIT-H and Honorary Director, Centre for Faculty Development and Management, NMREC, Hyderabad. She is also Founder, Teacher’s Academy. For more visit www.inspiring-teachers.com)