Overview of some Graphic Organisers

Organising Thinking

Many teachers use graphic organisers with students to assist students to organise their thoughts, ideas and information. What are graphic organisers? Graphic organisers are a visual way of organising information and constructing knowledge.   They are great to use as part of whole class brainstorming sessions as they help students understand the relationships between different ideas and information.   They also model strategies for thinking and problem solving. About our Graphic Organiser Collection .   These graphic organisers include: PMI Chart (Plus, Minus Interesting); KWL Chart (Know, Want to Know, Learnt); Compare and Contrast Chart; Semantic Analysis Chart; Report Plan; News Plan; Story Plan; Story Grammar Chart; Retrieval Chart; Y Chart; Recount Helper.

Why use Graphic Organisers?
The human brain naturally looks for connections between old and new information. Additionally, studies have shown that the brain processes information most efficiently in chunks. Graphic organizers complement both of these processes by helping students:

• Visually sort new information into familiar categories
• Analyze the relationships between old and new information
• Create a simple structure for thinking about information in new ways
• Review concepts and demonstrate understanding

Graphic organizers can be used in all phases of learning from brainstorming ideas to presenting findings


Lets take a look at what PMI’s are. PMI stands for 'Plus/Minus/Interesting' and is a good way of weighing the pros, cons and implications of a decision. When you have selected a course of action, it is important to check and judge if its the right decision.

To use the technique, draw up a table with three columns headed Plus, Minus and Interesting. Within the table write down all the positive points of following the course of action, all the negatives, and all the interesting implications and possible outcomes.

If the decision is still not obvious, you can then score the table to show the importance of individual items. The total score should show whether it is worth implementing the decision.



My goodness how the time fly's it's been a week since I've posted to this blog but I've been learning how to create my wiki . I've been doing all my readings and following along doing what I need to do to successfully complete this course. This picture depicts cogs in a brain, thats how my thought processes are at the moment. When I began study I could hear them moving clogged up with rust which is slowly working its way off the cogs and the thought processes are happening more freely.

I've participated in the group wikis, so please feel free to go to the class group wik i and have a look it's full of some interesting perspectives. I found the participation in the practice quizzes very helpful in order for me to collaborate into working out the most appropriate answer.  I have also blogged about The Thinking Hats.
I also had a go at creating  my own website. Creating the website took me a long time I spent quite a considerable amount of hours trying to add things to the website until I found out that there is only limited things you can do with the free basic version.
I've found the course collaborate sessions very helpful. I will be joining again this Wednesday evening. It's been a very exhaustive and steep but satisfying learning curve so far. I also participated in the questionaire about Learning Styles and will post the results here as soon as I can work out how to do so.........stay tuned!