Your power tools for making the complex comprehensible
Now more than ever, our students are being asked to do highly advanced thinking, talking, and writing around their reading. If only there were ingenious new tools that could give our students the space to tease apart complex ideas in order to comprehend and weld their understandings into a new whole. Good news: these tools exist—Mining Complex Text. You’ll learn how graphic organizers can:
- 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
“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.”
(DOUGLAS FISHER, Coauthor of Rigorous Reading)
“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.”
(LAURA ROBB, Author of Vocabulary Is Comprehension)
“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!”
(MICHAEL MCKENNA, Coauthor of Assessment for Reading Instruction, Second Edition)
“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.”
(LESLIE BLAUMAN, Author of The Common Core Companion, Grades 3-5)
