Advancing Learning

Using graphic advance organizers scaffolds students' sense of community

Second-grade teacher Linda Avilez has taught the social studies theme of "community" since she started teaching 10 years ago. While her students show interest in the lessons, Avilez was never fully satisfied with their understanding of core concepts. She suspects the problem might be partly due to her students' high family mobility rate. Their sense of community is not strong. Students who move frequently are more likely to perform below grade level. Most of the school's second-graders read below grade level.

Avilez and two colleagues met to discuss teaching the social studies unit. They asked: How can students appreciate how the community is like or different from other communities, near or far, if they don't have a strong sense of place? The teachers also discussed how to address improving literacy through reading and writing in the content areas, and integrating technology.

They adjusted the focus of the unit to address the functions of a community. Were there universal functions—from tribal, to highly urban, to rural communities—that could serve as a framework on which students could build understanding of the local community?

Implementing Research-Based Strategies

The teachers chose to employ concept maps to create advance organizers, organizational strategies that help connect the new to the known. They serve as a framework for helping students focus on what they will learn next.

• Advance organizers, especially visual ones, help students learn new concepts and vocabulary (Stone, 1983).


• Students learn more when they are presented information in several modes (Paivio, 1986).


• Presenting information graphically as well as symbolically in an advance organizer reinforces vocabulary learning and supports reading (Moore & Readence, 1984; Brookbank, Grover, Kullberg, & Strawser, 1999).


• Higher level, general advance organizers produce deeper learning than overly detailed organizers (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001).

Technology Supporting Success

The teachers chose to use familiar concept-mapping software called Inspiration, a powerful and easy-to-use mapping software. The software and three digital cameras played essential roles as Avilez introduced the lessons on community. The software had features that were helpful: an extensive graphics library, and the "import images" function, which allowed students to insert photos into the concept map.

Avilez introduced the first lesson on community with this functional definition: A community meets the needs of the people in it. She introduced the advance organizer and a simple concept map that showed this definition statement, which they read together. Then she showed images and associated vocabulary for the categories of health, safety, jobs, learning, and well-being. Next, she showed a variety of pictures of local places, people, and services, and asked students to categorize them by their function, matching them to the advance organizer.

At the end, students were asked to take digital photos of places, people, and services in the community, and describe how each supported people's needs. Their pictures would be added to the advance organizer, which was becoming richer all the time, clustering around the feature or features of community represented. Students took the digital cameras on a field trip downtown and took turns taking pictures of people, places, and services. They downloaded pictures into the graphic organizer, and printed images to write about in their daily journals.

The school's two main goals of improving literacy and integrating technology were closer to being met as the students were better able to identify and learn the key concepts of their curriculum. Later, their studies extended beyond the local community as they researched places they had lived before, as well as other nearby areas. The advance organizers continued to serve the students as they studied communities in distant parts of the world.