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Graphic Organizers Overview

What is a graphic organizer?

Graphic organizers are visual thinking tools that make pictures of your thoughts. The pictures demonstrate relationships between facts, concepts, or ideas, and guide your thinking as you design the map or diagram.

People who have learning disabilities are often visual learners and thinkers. That means they understand and remember information better when ideas, words, and concepts are associated with pictures, diagrams, charts, and maps.

Why use graphic organizers?

Graphic organizers can help to visualize and construct ideas, organize and/or sequence information, plan what to write, increase reading comprehension, brainstorm, organize problems and solutions, compare and contrast ideas, show cause and effect, and more. The ability to color-code thoughts in a picture can help significantly in understanding and remembering the information.

Graphic organizers can be created for something as simple as a shopping list or as complicated as structuring business components or writing a research paper.

Different types of graphic organizers

There are many different types of graphic organizers. Some are made based on the specific goal, like showing overlapping relationships or visualizing a process. There are literally thousands of free templates available online just search for “free graphic organizers.” The following are samples of only a few types of graphic organizers. More samples and how to use them are here (Links to an external site.)

Research the internet and find a graphic organizer that best suits your classroom.