Writing: Am I the only one who thinks graphic organizers are STOOPID?

[FlockOfSillies]

I'm using Writing Aids alongside TOG, and the graphic organizer stuff seems to be a total waste of time. I know other curricula use them also, but this seems like a MS Word-driven newfangled thing to me. We never did any of this stuff when I was in school. We just wrote outlines and notes on index cards and stuff.

 

Can I have permission to ditch the graphic organizer stuff? My kids aren't going to need this stuff to do well on the SAT, are they?

[8filltheheart]

I don't know what WAs graphic organizer is like, but my kids like Inspiration. It gives visual aids on how to set up different type of papers like comparison/contrast, cause/effect, etc. One of my kids spends time messing with the graphics while she is building her outline. She says that it is useful time to organize her thoughts in her head before she commits them to paper.

 

Do kids need them? Well, depending on the age, I used word maps on paper way back with my oldest when we didn't even own a computer. Word maps (circle with main idea with sprockets of ideas coming off and then numbering those sprockets) help younger kids organize their thoughts. Older kids, no.

 

THe nice thing about GOs is that it only takes a click to convert to multiple different types of outlines. But no.....you don't have to like them. :)

[Trivium Academy]

They're just a tool, if you don't feel they are worth using then don't. :) I'm grateful for them, esp. with dd8 this coming year, I can see how they are going to be beneficial for her. I won't use them all the time but when new concepts are being introduced I will. If I were you, try to stop using them and see how it goes- if you do well then great but if you find they are useful they'll be there for you to use. Win-win, right?

[Janet in Toronto]

They're a tool, and particularly effective for visual learners. They've been around well before MS Word, LOL! DH is extremely visual, and uses them to organize information when he's preparing presentations etc. DS13 is also very visual and uses them for studying, whereas DS16 uses index cards and study sheets. We've also used them as a family to lay out project plans for things around the house.

 

I didn't use them in school. but used them at work from the late 80s onwards, but then I worked with creatives and psychologists. One guy in my team used mind-maps to take all his notes at meetings, presentations, brainstorming, etc.

 

Like any tool, they're not for everyone, so feel free to ditch them if they're not helpful.

[FloridaLisa]

I'm an outline kinda gal. I've seen lots of graphic organizers and they have never ever helped me organize a paper. Since they don't work with my teaching style, I haven't introduced them to my kids. I'm pretty sure they'll be okay. ;)

 

Lisa

[Nestof3]

I am not familiar with those specific ones, but I actually like them in general. Perhaps it's the visual learner in me. I particularly love using Venn diagrams with my boys. We usually do them orally right now, I hold up the chart and ask them to give me info, and I write it in.

 

We did one for comparing/contrasting spiders and insects.

 

I think they are great for review.

[Matryoshka]

I'm an outline kinda gal. I've seen lots of graphic organizers and they have never ever helped me organize a paper. Since they don't work with my teaching style, I haven't introduced them to my kids. I'm pretty sure they'll be okay. ;)

 

This pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about them! Just looking at them annoys me!

 

Funny, because I like charts and maps over text usually to show me information, because they're more efficient and I can get at a glance what I'd otherwise have to read through - but somehow those graphic organizers seem the opposite to me. For me, an outline is a more efficient way of organizing and parsing that kind of information than any of those GOs. I'm susupecting it's the sequential part of my brain that's annoyed - a written paper presents information sequentially, but GOs often don't. Those bubble diagrams are the worst offenders, lol.

 

I was bugged last year that my kids were having trouble organizing their thoughts for papers - so I just introduced outlining in 4th. :tongue_smilie:

[katilac]

I personally don't care to use them, but people think/work differently. If they seemed helpful to any of my kids, that would be fine with me (although I'd probably only introduce if other methods didn't work well).

 

I'm sure quite a few people on the boards do choose to use them, so perhaps "am I the only one who doesn't find them useful?" would be better wording than STOOPID, ;)

[Melissa in CA]

My son likes them. Enjoys them even. It helps him to get thoughts down on paper. He can then take those thoughts, decide on those he will actually use in his paper, and then organize them via outline if he so choses. He is not super confident in outlining yet, so perhaps when he gets better at that he will drop the graphic organizers altogether.

 

I say let your kids use them if it is helpful to them, drop them if not. As long as they have a way to organize their thoughts who cares how they do so. I was never introduced to outlining OR graphic organizers in school!! How in the world I wrote papers is beyond me. :confused:

 

Actually...did I write in school? I surely don't remember doing so. :lol:

[2cents]

I'm not a big fan of graphic organizers, but then we aren't primarily visual learners either. I've tried to use them but the kids want to skip them and do ok without them. I'd ditch them if they don't work for you.

[Carol in Cal.]

However, I do like to give my daughter familiarity with a variety of tools for writing. So we covered them just enough so that she can look at one and know what is going on, and then she proceeded to decide not to use them, ever. I'm fine with that, as she has other tools to help her organize her work. She does use freewrites similarly, and when she does them on the computer, she can easily move paragraphs around in Word to get the organization corrected once she has all of her ideas down on paper. Others use outlines in that manner, but she finds that when she does, she writes in a very wooden way.

 

Again, outlines and freewrites are just tools. I want her to have all of them. I think outlines are more helpful than GO's because they are also good for taking notes on reference material and in classes, so I am pushing familiarity with them much harder, but I don't insist that she use them in her writing.

 

Incidentally, she does take the CA state tests, and GO's have been covered there a bit. So I'm glad that our brief use of them was helpful to her in preventing her from feeling completely lost. We use the Spectrum CA test prep books annually, in a fairly casual way, to prepare for the tests and make sure that we have at least touched on everything that they will cover. I don't teach from them, but I do sometimes add a bit to our curricular work when I see a nomenclature or format that we have not covered pop up in one of those books.

[WTMindy]

I think it is kind of like using math manupulatives. I hate math manipulatives. To me they just seem extranious because my brain works that way naturally (and thank goodness so does my kids' brains :001_smile: so I don't have to use them). However, as a math teacher I know that not all kids have the same type of wiring, so I need to use manipulatives with some kids who don't intuitively get it.

 

Basically graphic organizers are a way to lead a kid to an outline. Your brain probably doesn't need that extra step, and it sounds like your kids don't need them either. So skip them, just like I skip manipulatives. However, for people whose brain doesn't work the same way, they can be a very helpful in-between step to form an outline.

 

One thing I will say, is that I don't think WA does a great job leading you from the GO to a finished paragraph. I think that step is a little weak in WA.

[FlockOfSillies]

I didn't mean to imply that people who use GO's are dumb or anything like that. It does encourage me to know that I'm not missing some big-picture thing by doing without them.

 

I may find that one or more of my younger students will benefit from them; but given how frustrated my 5th grader was getting last week, I think I'll follow Carol's advice about exposing her to them and giving permission to ignore them completely. (We do the CAT-5 each year, so it helps to know what to expect at each new level.)

 

Thanks again! Y'all are just the best!

[Reya]

I'm using Writing Aids alongside TOG, and the graphic organizer stuff seems to be a total waste of time. I know other curricula use them also, but this seems like a MS Word-driven newfangled thing to me. We never did any of this stuff when I was in school. We just wrote outlines and notes on index cards and stuff.

 

Can I have permission to ditch the graphic organizer stuff? My kids aren't going to need this stuff to do well on the SAT, are they?

 

I despise them and find them useless. If they work for you or your kids, great. :-) But I'm never going to like them.

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

Personally I don't find them very useful in my own writing but I do love a good chart or list when getting organized...

 

I think it depends on how the kids' brains are wired...

 

Perhaps they won't find them useful, perhaps the will need them briefly to learn how to organize their thoughts before putting them in writing. Perhaps your time would be better spent teaching them outlines than using GOs. You certainly don't need them. I am of the opinion that they are a tool for getting your ideas on paper and logically organized. Then, once you have collected your thoughts, you can begin to write. Find the tool that helps your kids organize their thoughts before beginning to put them on paper, scrap what doesn't work. Or do the opposite-have them get the thoughts on paper and if they don't seem organized then pull out a GO, regroup and begin again.

 

Use the tool as it works for your kids-I find that the older they get my brain sometimes works differently so I try to expose them to the tools they can use even when I don't like them. If it doesn't work don't dump the idea behind the assignment-write about topic x but do it they way it works best in your house.

[dani3boys]

My oldest son does not do well with them, but my younger two do. I think they are a tool to use if you would like to.

 

Danielle

[keptwoman]

I don't even know what graphic organisers ARE *blush*

[Karenciavo]

I thought the same thing at one time Brenda, my brain is wired for outlines. I love outlines, they make so much sense to me. They make a lot of sense to my oldest son too and when I began teaching him to write he did beautifully with them. Son #2, my left brained VSL guy, struggled with outlining. I pushed and pushed outlining and he got more and more frustrated. When I began using The Lost Tools of Writing it all began to click for him. LToW uses both a graphic organizer and outlining, first you brain storm with the graphic organizer, then you outline taking the info from the graphic organizer. Those tools have helped him become a much better writer. My frustrated writer *volunteered* to be a reporter for my co-op's newletter!

 

Anyway, my point is some people need to lay out their thoughts with graphic organizers, they need to have questions asked of them to fill them out (who, what, where, why, when or in the LToW case, affirmative, negative, interesting.) If they don't work for you, like many others have said before me, don't use them. It's fine. :)

[Allearia]

I hate most charts and things like that so graphic organizers have never done a thing for me. I prefer to just read a text description. I assume that others may find them helpful and when it comes up I will at least expose ds to them but I don't get them myself.

[akmommy]

I definitly don't think they are neccessary, just another tool. If your child doesn't find them useful or is getting frutrated with it then skip them. My oldest however is the creative type and, she has discovered that the web style GO's are her friend. For her creative brain they just make sense, on the other hand she hates outlining.

[FlockOfSillies]

OK. Where I'm getting hung up, I think, is that we're in the early weeks of TOG 1 Redesigned, and the main writing assignment for the week is to use the GO and put it aside for a future week to do a rough draft. We're doing the sequence in Bible order instead of TOG's recommended order because of my littles. So I feel kinda flummoxed about how to get around assigning something I won't use. Do I just have her write a rough draft now, or do an outline? Aaaaaccckkk. This will all get better when we get to Week 7. Right? RIGHT?! LOL.