About the Book
"How many times have you heard ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ . . . In this text, Lapp, Wolsey, Wood, and Johnson make a vital connection between reading words and the role of graphics. They demonstrate how teachers and students can blend the two such that great learning occurs in every classroom, every day."
—DOUGLAS FISHER
Coauthor of Rigorous Reading
Imagine you are a fourth grader, reading about our solar system for the first time. Or you’re a high school student, asked to compare survival in Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games and Elie Wiesel’s Night. Reading complex texts of any kind is arduous, and now more than ever, students are being asked to do highly advanced thinking, talking, and writing around their reading. If only there were ingenious new power tools that could give students the space to tease apart complex ideas in order to comprehend and to weld their understandings into a new whole.
Good news: such tools exist. In the two volumes, Mining Complex Texts, Grades 2-5 and 6-12, a formidable author team shares fresh ways to use the best digital and print graphic organizers in whole-class, small-group, and independent learning. Big believers of the gradual release method, the authors roll out dozens of examples of dynamic lessons and collaborative work across the content areas so that we see the process of using these visual tools to:
Help students read, reread, and take notes on a text
Promote students’ oral sharing of information and their ideas
Elevate organized note-making from complex text(s)
Scaffold students’ narrative and informational writing
Move students to independent thinking as they learn to create their own organizing and note-taking systems
Gone are the days of fill-‘em-in and forget-‘em graphic organizers. With these two volumes, teachers and professional development leaders have a unified vision of how to use these tools to meet the demands of an information-saturated world, one in which students need to be able to sift, sort, synthesize, and apply knowledge with alacrity and skill.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Graphic Organizers: Making the Complex Comprehensible
How to Think About Standards Alignment
How to Help Students Meet the Standards
Tips for Using Graphic Organizers Dynamically
How to Meet Eight Intertwined Academic Goals
What Lies Ahead in This Book
Chapter 2. Thinking on the Page: The Research Behind Why Graphic Organizers Work
Picture This: Visuals Quicken and Deepen Text Learning
General Tips: How to Use Graphic Organizers Well
Tiered Organizers: Scaffold Student Progress
Examples of Tiered Graphics Organizers
Adapting Graphic Organizers for Tiered Learning
A Sample Tiered Lesson
At-a-Glance Chart of Graphic Organizers Matched to Academic Goals
Chapter 3. Using Graphic Organizers to Acquire Academic Vocabulary
Frayer Organizer
Vocabulary Triangle
Concept/Definition Map
Word Map
Chapter 4. Graphic Organizers Support Literary Text Reading and Writing Tasks
Freytag’s Pyramid
Chapter 5. Graphic Organizers Support Informational Text Reading and Writing Tasks
Text Search and Find Board
4-Square With a Diamond
Modified KWL
Chapter 6. Graphic Organizers Support Students’ Reading Proficiencies
Note-Card Organizer
Tabbed Book Manipulative
Somebody-Wanted-But-So
Understanding Text Structures: Five Text Types
Rereading Organizer
Chapter 7. Graphic Organizers Boost Questioning and Responding
I-Chart and I-Guide
Flip Chart Manipulative
Text-Dependent Question/Response Organizer
Chapter 8. Graphic Organizers Foster Understanding and Writing Arguments
Seven-Part Graphic Organizer for Composing an Argument
Thinking Map
Chapter 9. Graphic Organizers Support Collaboration
Project Management Organizer
Conclusion
Appendix
Glossary
References
Index
About the Author :
Diane Lapp, EdD, is a distinguished professor of education at San Diego State University where her work continues to be applied to schools. She is also an instructional coach and teacher at Health Sciences High & Middle College. Throughout her career, Diane has taught in elementary, middle, and high schools. Her major areas of research and instruction regard issues related to the planning and assessment of very intentional literacy instruction and learning. A member of both the California and the International Reading Halls of Fame, Diane has authored, coauthored, and edited numerous articles, columns, texts, handbooks and children’s materials on instruction, assessment, and literacy related issues. Diane is the recipient of the ILA 2023 William S. Gray Citation of Merit, a prestigious award reserved for those who have made outstanding contributions to multiple facets of literacy development. Diane can be reached at lapp@sdsu.edu. Follow her on twitter @lappsdsu As a teacher for online courses hosted by the University of Central Florida, Dr. Thomas DeVere Wolsey is interested in how the interactions of students in digital and face-to-face environments change their learning. While much of his research centers on how visual information, such as graphic organizers, works in tandem with text to improve learning, he is also intrigued by the intersections of traditional literacies with digital literacies, specifically focusing on how those literacies affect teacher preparation and professional development.
Dr. Karen Wood has been training literacy specialists for over 25 years at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she is a Professor in the Department of Reading and Elementary Education. Dr. Wood is a published author and former reading teacher, reading specialist, and K–12 instructional coordinator, and much of her writing focuses on translating research and theory into classroom practice across all subjects and grade levels.
Dr. Kelly Johnson is currently a faculty member in teacher education at San Diego State University and an instructional coach in the San Diego Unified School District. A Nationally Board Certified teacher, Kelly devotes much of her work to literacy teaching and learning in classrooms. Dr. Johnson is passionate about the teaching and learning connection that results from proper teacher modeling, productive group work, formative assessment, and student engagement.
Review :
"How many times have you heard ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ Visual, graphic information is important because human brains are hard-wired to attend to images. The challenge is that students still have to read words to achieve success. In this text, Lapp, Wolsey, Wood, and Johnson make a vital connection between reading words and the role of graphics. They demonstrate how teachers and students can blend the two such that great learning occurs in every classroom, every day."
"Lapp, Wolsey, Wood, and Johnson have written a book that will become the resource for using graphic organizers across disciplines! With careful attention to the details teachers crave in order to design meaningful lessons, the authors guide teachers on a journey that takes them far beyond the traditional uses of graphic organizers—jotting notes and organizing information—and show teachers how these visual tools lead students to independent thinking and inquiry, as well as support the Common Core reading and writing standards. What I love about this book is that it fosters original thinking among students as they design graphic organizers that enable them to unpack meaning from complex texts and develop arguments for essays."
"Professional books have long urged teachers to use graphic organizers, but most of these books are dreadfully short on specifics. Diane Lapp and her colleagues have addressed this problem in an admirable fashion. They examine with care the kinds of organizers available to teachers, together with when and how to use them. And by showing how organizers transcend disciplinary boundaries, the authors pave the way for a school-wide focus for professional learning. Educators endeavoring to meet the challenges of the Common Core should mark this title as a must-read. This engaging book is long overdue and I recommend it enthusiastically!"
"For educators looking for ways to implement graphic organizers in their classrooms, this is the resource for you. The numerous types of graphic organizers, the research behind them, and the how and why to use them with students are all at your fingertips. I envision this book being especially helpful for teachers new to the field just learning about graphic organizers."
