Use Advance Organizers to Structure Class Involvement
A strong method to facilitate structuring class time as described above is to use an advance
organizer to provide structure for the entire class period (see Figure 1). It structures the acquisition of
new knowledge, skills, and dispositions taught directly by the teacher, as well as higher order thinking,
and self-reflection. The advance organizer provides a roadmap for students to follow from the
introduction of the lesson through the conclusion. When students know where they are and where they
are going in the lesson, they are less likely to mentally stray, and more likely to stay engaged. The
advance organizer can be as simple as a table that provides information, writing prompts, and blank
space where students write their responses.
The first box in an advance organizer might have a paragraph or an outline of a mini-lesson
delivered as whole-group instruction. The following box might have a prompt asking the students to list
three important ideas they have discovered about the problem they are currently working to solve. The
boxes can even allocate time so that the students are aware that initially they will have, for example,
fifteen minutes to work on their individual projects before they will be directed back to a whole-group
focus. The third box might have a higher order thinking question or prompt: and the fourth a prompt for
self-assessment and self-reflection. Following self-reflection, the pattern can be repeated with another
box and prompt to list, for example, three things the student is still working to discover during the next
fifteen minutes of class time, followed again with a higher order thinking prompt.
The advance organizers should be collected at the end of each class period. It is important for
the teacher to provide meaningful feedback and return the graded organizer at the beginning of the very
next class. This reinforces the importance of the tasks associated with the organizer and provides
individualized feedback and direction. Prompt, meaningful feedback lets students know that their work
is important. When students realize class work is important they are more engaged.