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80 Graphic Organizer Templates for Active Learning

by Ernest Gonzales
written by Ernest Gonzales

If you are a reader like me, you can read a few pages of a book, pause for a second, and come to the realization that you can’t remember what you just read. Maybe you’re driving somewhere, and for a split second, you forget where you are driving. These types of experiences can happen easily because we are not actively thinking. The same thing happens to learners in our classrooms. In order to avoid these situations and seek deeper learning experiences for students that help them retain information, active learning instructional strategies can be utilized.

What Is Active Learning?

Active learning is a term used to refer to instructional strategies focused on getting learners to actively process new information such as through reflection, collaboration, writing, and more. Through active learning experiences, learners can retain more information than through passive learning experiences, such as note-taking. So it is important that educators implement active learning instructional strategies to improve learning outcomes. For those wanting to learn more about active learning, visit Cornell’s Center for Teaching Innovation.

Using Graphic Organizers for Active Learning (GOAL)

graphic organizer categories to promote active learning

One easy way to incorporate more active learning strategies is through the use of graphic organizers. In order to make it easier for educators to find and use these resources, I designed a series of 80 “GOALs” or “Graphic Organizers for Active Learning”. These GOALs are free, ready-to-use, and designed as dual-language resources. For districts such as ours in San Antonio, with 20% emergent bilinguals, it is crucial to have resources that are available in English and Spanish.  The graphic organizer templates are organized into different themes such as problem solving, collaboration, SEL, writing, and more to simplify the process of finding the exact template you need for lessons. The templates are designed with fun graphics and are meant to be engaging to your audiences.

The Graphic Organizer Templates

Here is a menu of eight categories of graphic organizers. Each category contains 10 different designs to choose from. The designs are created in Canva, an amazing design tool that is offering free services to K-12 schools. When you click on one of the designs, you’ll notice an option to use the template in Canva, meaning you can customize the template to fit exactly what you need, or you can use it as-is. Be sure to create a Canva account if you don’t already have one or talk to your district’s IT department about setting up access for your entire district.

Graphic Organizer Formats

When ready, you can print the graphic organizer for your students as a PDF file, or you can use these files with the ed tech tools of your choice. Since the GOALs are designed in Canva, you can download a PNG or a JPG file in order to place the graphic organizer into popular tools such as Kami, Lumio, Seesaw, or Canvas. For those educators ready to app smash these templates into ed tech tools, here is a guide with short video tutorials to help you get started.

exit ticket graphic organizers to promote active learning

As educators, the instructional strategies we implement should seek to make learning more effective. Active learning can do this for our students, but it helps to have the resources we need to get started. It’s an added bonus if the resources are free, too! Make active learning a “GOAL” in 2023 by downloading these templates today.

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Good Teaching

Five Ways to Promote Active Learning with Lumio

by Kris Astle, M.A., Education Strategist, SMART Technologies
written by Kris Astle, M.A., Education Strategist, SMART Technologies

We all know the impact that COVID 19 had and continues to have on many elements of education. One of the shifts that we’ve seen is an increase in visibility. There is more attention on the what and the how students are being taught. Through new tools and adapted approaches to instruction, we have seen unique ways in which learners connect to our teaching. We have also seen how the world around them can both fuel and distract from their learning, even simultaneously. Engaging students in active learning is more important than ever before.

Why Encourage Active Learning?

When I think about how I structure my lessons for in-class and out-of-class learning, I try to design active learning experiences. The goal is for these experiences to get my students thinking about, analyzing, and interpreting the content in meaningful ways. Active learning allows students to truly connect with their learning and understand it on a deeper level. 

Engaging students in active learning doesn’t need to be complicated. There are many ways to build active learning experiences into instruction, from simply having students draw what they know, to inquiry-driven learning units, to experiential learning through hands-on or virtual site visits. Lumio, formerly SMART Learning Suite Online, is one of my favorite tools to embed active learning into my teaching. It helps to seamlessly provide students with opportunities to interact with both their learning and their peers as they explore content and build new skills. The basic plan is free, but there are also paid plans that offer additional lesson storage.

Let’s explore five easy active learning ideas that can be used across the grade levels for in-class and out-of-class activities.

1. Reflection and Conversation

An easy activity I love to use is simply having students pause and think. Setting aside a few moments for students to reflect on their learning allows them to build connections and activate prior knowledge in meaningful ways. Having students share their reflections with peers can further amplify this experience. Lumio makes this easy to do, even on the fly, with an activity called Shout It Out. It’s super simple to set up, and I can pose a question or provide a statement for the entire class to reflect on and respond to.

Students submit their responses using a text box on their device, and these appear on my laptop or display. It is also possible for students to submit images as their responses to a question. I like to lower the barrier to entry for this activity by letting my students contribute anonymously. And you can toggle the anonymity option on and off. We can then evaluate responses as a group, allowing students to see their peers’ thoughts, make new connections, and drive a good classroom discussion about any topic. 

Graphic Organizer Active Learning

2. Minute Papers and Digital Manipulatives

Minute papers are another easy way to embed active learning in a lesson by asking students to articulate their current understanding of the lesson content. I love to use a digital manipulative or simulation to allow students to explore a concept, work through misconceptions, and then end the activity with reflection on their learning through a minute paper. Lumio has lots of options for digital manipulatives, including PhET simulations which are one of my favorites. Check out this simulation and minute paper activity on diffusion.

Minute paper for active learning
Example Minute Paper

3. Connecting with Real-World Content 

Real-world content helps make learning relevant for our students. It connects learning to their lives and communities and has a direct impact. An easy way to allow your class to explore and respond to a topic is to embed a YouTube video in your lesson. You can follow the video with a small group activity using a graphic organizer where students can collaborate and learn from each other. They can share, sort, and categorize their thoughts on the video content through a graphic organizer. You can find STEAM examples here.

digital manipulative for active learning

4. Game-Based Review Activities

Review games are another great way to incorporate active learning into your classroom. Not only do they get your students engaged and involved through friendly competition, but they also provide immediate feedback to students so they can identify their misconceptions and move their learning forward. Monster Quiz (and Team Quiz for situations when monsters aren’t appropriate!) in Lumio is an easy and fun way to do this. 

Lumio for Problem-solving

5. Extending Conversation

My fifth (and definite favorite) active learning activity is to set up a class chat or backchannel discussion for students. This allows them to learn from and with each other. In many of my lessons, I set up a whole class workspace where students can leave questions about the content. Other students can reinforce their learning by answering these questions, and we can revisit questions later to discuss responses and fill in where no answer has been given. As a teacher, I can moderate as needed in real time, too. 

Active learning with devices

Active learning is easy to incorporate into everyday teaching to engage students and inspire their thinking. It also gives both teachers and students real-time insights into the progression of their learning. Hopefully, you will find these ways to use Lumio for promoting active learning beneficial for your students and classroom.

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Interactive storytelling
Content AreasGood Teaching

Getting Students Invested: The Power of Interactive Storytelling

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

“Who can tell me what a budget is?”

The class responds with blank stares, the kind that could last the entire period if I let it kill my excitement. I can already see the class clowns waiting for the right moment to pounce on me. But watch this: “A budget is a tool you can use so you can do whatever you want with your money–and hopefully have more.”

The Story of Jason

More money? Now I have their attention. Even the skeptics are quiet. I have about five seconds before they challenge me. “Let’s jump right into it,” I continue, “On the smart board, we’ve got two columns: income and expenses. In this example, we’re going to look at creating monthly expenses for an imaginary student named Jason who just graduated from high school. How much do you think he spends on rent? Call it out.”

All sorts of ideas come flying out, from $100 to  $3,000 to someone who insists that “Jason lives at home, yo he don’t pay rent.” We all have a laugh. Everyone’s budget is going to look different, I explain. We plug $100 into the budget for now, and I ask them what about groceries? We’ll multiply a weekly estimate by four. Everyone calls out their best guesses. They argue over how much is too much or too little, and everyone falls skeptically silent when I say I normally only allow myself $40 per week for groceries and sometimes just $20. In New York City? Yes, anywhere.

Applying Storytelling to Real-World Application

“It’s all about choices. Some people chose to spend more on groceries, less on rent. It’s all about making the numbers work for you. We’ll talk more about that later. How much for clothes? Travel? Going out and having fun? There are no right or wrong answers.”

We fill out the other category expenses for a total of $1,000 a month, then compare that to Jason’s part-time income working at McDonald’s: $300. A third cell calculates the difference of the income and expenses: every month, Jason is in the red by $700.

Now it’s time to raise the stakes: “Let’s say Jason wants to go on a date with his significant other; that will cost $120. Does he have money?”

“No!” says the class, laughing. We reduce the grocery budget by half. Instantly, we see how much closer Jason is to reaching his goal. Now he’s only in the red by $600. Once we get Jason into the black by reducing his expenses (and/or getting a better job), we can see how long it will take him to reach his goal in another cell which divides the goal by the difference. If Jason makes a $30 profit every month, it will take him four months to reach his goal. Does he want to wait that long? His date is tomorrow. What else can we do?

Advantages of Interactive Storytelling

Everyone’s excited to share ideas and laugh at Jason. Since he’s imaginary, nobody gets embarrassed. But since his story is so relatable, they get emotionally invested in helping Jason go on this date. They always root for their peers who volunteer to create a budget and have real goals like going to college, becoming a doctor, bringing family member over from Pakistan, starting a business, or maybe just buying the latest iPhone.

Well, how soon do you want the iPhone? How much are you willing to sacrifice for it? How hard do you want to work for it? I offer suggestions, but they can see for themselves what happens when we plug in the numbers together. It’s my favorite game show and interactive story ever told on a smart board–or whiteboard if we’re doing the calculations by hand. You can access the spreadsheet I used and make a copy for your own lesson here.

This presentation has worked in dozens of inner-city schools in New York City and New Jersey. Over a thousand students have participated in planning imaginary Jason’s future. Hopefully, a significant number of them will use these budgeting skills to plan their own.

I think what made this lesson successful, compared to the times I tried lecturing about my experiences and strategies, was that I give them control of Jason’s story, to precede the control they will have over their own stories. I am the facilitator of this activity, and they are the instructors. It’s a space where they can play and decide for themselves if imaginary Jason was wise to spend $600 on clothes every month and wait five years before he can afford the new iPhone.

Applying Interactive Storytelling Across the Curriculum

Interactive storytelling can apply to any subject!

  • Imagine a choose-your-own-adventure activity for history class to see how hard it was for Lincoln to keep the country together.
  • In physics class, we could be measuring tennis ball bounces to design an imaginary lunar landing craft.
  • In English class, we can write essays to convict or defend Poe’s narrators.

Everything we teach in the classroom can apply to real life, but sometimes it takes a little bit of imagination to get students to think in the moment to the point that they’re so invested they stop asking why we’re learning it.

This is a guest blog by Jason Hewett. Jason is a writer, presenter, and actor based in New York City. He’s been working with kids for more than a decade as a teaching artist and volunteer at Camp Possibilities, a summer camp for diabetic children. Feel free to say hello or see what he’s up to by visiting jasonhewett.com.

 

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Educational TrendsGood Teaching

Making Your Classroom an Active Learning Environment

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

According to Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, educators fail when they focus too much on lectures and don’t measure the quality of teaching. His solution to this problem is to incorporate active learning methods to improve education slowly.

In one of his case studies, Wieman let students attend lectures and then gave them a pop quiz right at the start of the next class. Student performance was abysmal. A few weeks later, the results deteriorated further.  The students only retained a minimal amount of what was taught during the lectures.

The solution to this problem means a radical change to the traditional methods of teaching. If you are planning to up the ante when it comes to teaching this next year, here are some of the essentials that you should consider to move away from lectures and incorporate active learning in your classroom.

Active Learning Methods to Replace Long Lectures

Active learning is a teaching approach that has a student-centric mindset. In this approach, the teacher wants the students to take something that interests them and probe into it.

  • One of the most effective active learning methods is to divide a problem into sub-problems and assign it to several small groups within a class. Occasionally, the teacher should bring the main group back together and also guide them in the right direction.
  • Another active learning method is the One-Minute Paper or The Muddiest Point Paper in which the students are given the opportunity to write down the most important points from the day’s session or the least-clear point (muddiest). The responses can be later addressed in the next class or through online groups.
  • A very popular active learning method is brainstorming. Students are encouraged to generate ideas on a certain topic or a particular category. The ideas they pitch are written on a blackboard and all of the ideas, however improbable they may seem, must be noted.

Active learning is not just about handing over responsibilities to the student. It involves a great deal of effort from the teacher’s side as well. The teacher must not only know the content, but also know how to create interactive experiments and challenging scenarios.

Building a Dynamic Study Environment through Gadgets

Laptops are not the biggest source of distraction in a class. Boredom and irrelevance are. Good teaching can benefit from well-placed tech when it is used to promote active learning. Students tend to stay attentive to topics that grab their attention. Exercising their curiosity has an impact beyond the classroom itself.

  • Most existing classrooms have a specific set of hardware that the students and teachers are expected to comply with. This creates a lot of cable clutter, confusion, and difficulty for maintenance. But incorporating a device like Airtame into the classroom removes the necessity for cables when it comes to presentations and seminars and eases the maintenance overhead on IT admins. It also opens up the entire classrooms to learn collaboratively by allowing every student and teacher to mirror the contents from their device to the monitor independently.
  • Students nowadays don’t just want to learn about something, but they want to feel the context. This is where some of the most popular gadgets and technologies come into play. Virtual reality headsets can prove to be a boon for teachers as they allow students to virtually experience what is being taught. Whether it is learning about the solar system, different parts of a car, or historical monuments, these headsets can elevate the learning experience to a whole new level.

Hands-on Learning Is Crucial

Knowing concepts, but failing to understand where to use them, renders the knowledge useless. This is a very relevant statement in today’s world. Students are often only taught the high-level outline of concepts. They aren’t always encouraged to move deeper into the subject.

Hands-on learning through robotics, 3D printers, and more are proven to be better for the students in terms of retention capacity, problem-solving capability, and better engagement. What technology or strategies are you planning to implement next semester to bring more active learning into the classroom? There’s no time like the present to start planning for how to transform your teaching next fall.

This is a sponsored blog by  Luke Richardson. Luke is the Brand Director at Airtame. He’s motivated by the advancements in ed tech, and he’s an advocate for student-centered learning.

 

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Good TeachingiOS Tips and Tricks

Hacking the iPad for Vocabulary Growth

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Hacking your class set of iPads can help students learn. If you are ready to make vocabulary study more interactive, come along! Let’s review the primary cognitive processes involved in active learning. After all, who wants to just use technology to do boring vocabulary drills or study alone?

Active Learning

“Active learning refers to the robust research finding that learning is more durable and lasting when students are cognitively engaged in the learning process,”  says Dr. Jay Lynch. “Students need to be involved in active sense-making and knowledge construction.”  Effective learning engages students in one or more of three cognitive processes involved in active learning. Those three processes include:

  1. Students selecting relevant material. Can you imagine students deciding which vocabulary words and/or concepts they are unclear about and then working to better understand them?
  2. Organizing material in ways that make sense to them. Students can use technology, such as websites or apps, to make sense of unfamiliar words and/or concepts.
  3. Blending prior knowledge with new information. Students can create concepts maps that connect their own learning with new information.

Six steps from Robert Marzano in this tweeted diagram shared via @ImpactWales  highlight what we can do as teachers to assist students.

Six Steps to Vocabulary Teaching

Students should be introduced to new vocabulary via the following six steps. Take a moment to study the diagram, then join me as we explore a variety of iPad apps that can assist students in active learning achievement.

hacking

Hacking Your iPad for Active Learning with Vocabulary

The classroom teacher can help students create non-linguistic representations using iOS apps like the descriptions shown below:

  • Students can put their vocabulary words in the mouths of historical figures or others using the PhotoSpeak app (click to see sample lesson), which makes it easy to take a photo and represent it. Students can audio record themselves and then match it to a photo of a person.
  • Pupils can create a compare and contrast chart, exploring a vocabulary word and its relationships with other words, using Doodle Buddy (click to see more activities).
  • Learners can create a photo collage of pictures/images that represent the vocabulary word using Moldiv.
  • Students can capture or locate a photo that represents their vocabulary word and, using the Perfect Captions app, students can add a caption to the picture. Older students can also create dialogue in the image, if historical or featuring different actors, to explain the meaning of the vocabulary term or use it appropriately.

Each of these activities takes advantage of a different app; however, using an app like DoInk’s Green Screen (find out more), you can “app smash” the creations into one video or image. This allows teachers and students to add themselves to the explanation of a compare and contrast diagram created with Doodle Buddy or Perfect Captions.

Extended Learning

Students may also choose to use iPad whiteboard apps to facilitate explanation of a word. For example, a “Draw the Word” activity can help students using a digital whiteboard app. Those include apps like BaiBoard, Educreations, Quick Sketch,  ShowMe,  Whiteboard, or Whiteboard for Kids. These digital whiteboards allow students to visually represent their concept of a word’s meaning. In some cases, like Educreations, students can also include audio.

To extend student learning about vocabulary, hacking iPads can also involve creating concepts maps using apps like Ideament (iOS, free but $2.99 for full features), iBrainstormer, Total Recall – MindMap, or Penultimate.

Students could also interact with each others’ creations, recording their understanding of a diagram or video-recorded explanation. Using a free service such as Seesaw, students may turn in their work and/or link to other students’ vocabulary terms. They can also leave comments and be inspired by each other’s creations.

 

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Active Learning: A Student’s Perspective

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

This is a guest post by Britnee Gilliam, a student at Harmony School of Excellence in Austin, Texas and a summer intern at TCEA.

Teachers, have you ever seen your students looking blankly at you during a lecture? They’re not bored, but the class may be losing its spontaneous vibe. Perhaps you should shake things up some and get those kids hanging on the edge of their seats.

We love seeing a video when we walk into class. We also tend to be more attentive to videos because they are different than regular class lectures. But don’t pick just any video. Depending on the seriousness of the subject, pick a video that has humor while still communicating the lesson. Some examples are Crash Course or Bill Nye. With the video, you can have your class take notes on the key points; then they’ll have references for later.

We enjoy hands-on experiences as well. For example, in economics class learning about the stock exchange, you can give the class “money” to invest and then follow it. Watching our investments keeps us on our toes and makes us ask questions and try to gather information to improve. It also appeals to our competitive nature; which one of us can earn the most money?

Also, we love doing experiments in science classes. Who doesn’t like explosions? We students tend to remember things that we actually experience.

Integrating fine arts in a class also helps students process what we are learning. By making posters, shooting a class video, or even writing a screenplay on the topic, we can interpret the content of the lesson. These projects show our understanding of the subject and the kind of art we choose allows for our own unique interpretation.

Finally, have fun with your class and ask our opinion on how to learn the different subjects. Plan a variety of activities for us to do so we can learn in a new, exciting way. By using some of these ideas, you can help a class pay attention more often. They will more fully understand the material and be able to make it their own.

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