Graphical Representations to Clarify Text

My book is:  Benjamin, A. (2007).  But I’m Not a Reading Teacher:  Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Black font indicates what the author says.

Red font indicates my comments.

One of the strategies Benjamin uses is to turn text into a graphical representation.  This makes the student read through the text carefully, pulling out keywords, and if they know they have to make a graphical representation, keeps them more aware of relationships between words and phrases.  The first step would be to write down words that are unfamiliar.  Then, break these words down into components to find any Greek and Latin roots to help kids learn the vocabulary, comparing these new words to ones they’re already familiar.  When they learn the components for one word, they can then extend that knowledge to another word.  

For example, “optical” contains the root “opt” which means related to the eyes.  The kids might already know optometrist, so the teacher can point out that any word containing “opt” is related to the eyes.  A quick study of a few words wouldn’t take long, and could have lasting results.  Much more so than looking up vocabulary words and writing the definitions.

Benjamin points out that doing this graphical representation with a partner or a small group is helpful, especially if each group has to explain their graph to another pair, group or the class.  As she puts it, “you have to do something after you read to really have it sink in.” 

Some examples of graphical representations pulled from text that come to mind might be flow charts that describe cause-and-effect processes and cycles, hierarchical diagrams showing animal classification, Venn diagrams to show set theory, or drawings of atoms reacting to form new compounds.  Using diagrams and pictures in math help students envision equations from word problems. 

Scientific field guides often have a diagrammatic component to aid students in classification, since diagrams are so powerful in conveying information quickly and concisely.  This strategy is used in biology, chemistry and geology labs too, to aid in classifying “unknowns.”

A follow-on activity Benjamin describes for the graphical representation strategy, is to have students disrupt the representation somehow and ask questions about the resulting changes.  For example, if your representation is a flow chart, and you move a decision point, how does that effect the flow?  The overall result?

I can see how this would be helpful to conquer specific topics that were difficult to grasp, but doing this for much of the textbook would be too time consuming.  Doing it a couple of times at the beginning of the semester or a new topic might help kids to read more carefully in general.