The Battle of the Knowledge Organisers with metacognition.org.uk

The world of Knowledge Organisers is often a dichotomous one. Are you team ‘narrative’, or team ‘grid’? In this blog, Becky Sayers and Nathan Burns explore the purpose of both types, as well as their respective advantages, disadvantages and applicability across subjects. So place your bets, as the fight is about to start…!

 

Becky Sayers writes about the definition, purpose, advantages and disadvantages of the ‘narrative’  Knowledge Organiser.

The ‘Narrative’ Knowledge Organiser

Why do we use Knowledge Organisers?

As a faculty, we have been using Knowledge Organisers for around seven or eight years. If I’m honest, the original reason I used them is because I was told to do so by a faculty leader in whom I had immense trust. I did not understand their overall purpose and, as a result, the pages I produced were fairly poor quality. However, over the years we have thought carefully as a team about their purpose and, as a result, the Knowledge Organisers we have produced as a team are much higher-quality and form one ‘cog’ of how we teach Humanities to our pupils. As a faculty, we view Knowledge Organisers and homework as a means of consolidating input from lessons. We rarely ever use Knowledge Organisers in lessons, but rather show pupils how to use them as a means making further meaning of what they have already learned and strengthening those memories so that they have quick access to them whenever they need them in the future.

What do our Knowledge Organisers look like?

We use the ‘narrative style’ of Knowledge Organisers. Although we sometimes use tables, we mainly write in bullet points and give pupils a series of short sentences which concisely explain key facts and threshold concepts. Over the last two years, we have also begun to use graphic organisers, primarily flow charts, to demonstrate key processes or narratives. This also means that we produce individual Knowledge Organiser pages for sub-topics, rather than using a single page for an entire topic.

The content of our Knowledge Organisers is designed to be an exact mirror of the content which is taught in lessons. We normally plan and resource all lessons before producing the Knowledge Organiser. This allows us to develop a list of threshold concepts and facts which form the content of the Knowledge Organiser. In the past, when we have used generic Knowledge Organisers or we have failed to adapt them year on year, we found that pupils didn’t see the value in them, found them difficult to connect with what was being taught in lessons, or found them overwhelming.

How do we use Knowledge Organisers?

Our Knowledge Organisers are mainly used outside of the classroom or normal lessons. At the beginning of each unit, every pupil is given a copy of the Knowledge Organiser and an accompanying ‘quiz booklet’ with questions about each section of the Knowledge Organiser. Every teacher is also given a ‘teacher copy’ of the quiz booklet which is pre-populated with answers. Pupils’ homework then consists of a combination of answering questions for the first time using the Knowledge Organiser or testing themselves on previous quizzes from memory. We use the same structure for cover lessons (we have a set of cover booklets and Knowledge Organisers ready to go), subject content revision, and to help pupils with significant periods of absence to close gaps in their learning. Essentially, we usually expect pupils to use their Knowledge Organisers independently.

Why do we use this approach?

One of the main reasons why we opted for a narrative or graphic organiser based approach, rather than the ‘grid approach’, was that pupils almost always use their Knowledge Organisers outside of the classroom and usually use them independently. As a result, we wanted to create a document which would be concrete and which pupils could quickly connect to the content they had learned and would learn in lessons. By giving pupils sentences, which often sit the fact they are learning within a narrative, we believe that they are able to more easily understand why they need to learn it. Similarly, by using structures such as flowcharts or diagrams, we believe that it easier for pupils to make connections between different facts, thus more developing ‘chunks’ of information and developing a schema.

Using flowcharts and diagrams also has an added bonus in terms of workload: the vast majority of our input in History lessons is complete through whole class reading. This is then followed by an activity which is designed to check pupils’ comprehension of the text while also allowing them to consolidate their knowledge. Often, this task takes the form of a flowchart, the teacher copy of which can be quickly and easily transposed into the Knowledge Organiser. Pupils get access to a high-quality diagram which is familiar to them, and teachers can quickly produce high quality Knowledge Organiser pages.

Possible pitfalls of the narrative approach:

As a faculty, we have now been using this style of Knowledge Organiser for over half a decade. We have noticed two main pitfalls with this approach:

-          Not using a format which limits space can make it tempting to write bullet points which look more like paragraphs. This not only makes it more difficult for pupils to access content, but also runs the risk of including information which is interesting rather than necessary. Knowledge Organisers lose their focus on threshold concepts and look more like miniature textbooks.

-          Narrative style Knowledge Organisers take longer to write. Writing them can appear daunting. However, this also means that teachers are often loathe to edit or update them for fear that they will need to essentially start a rather daunting task from scratch. Without a rigorous continual quality assurance process and continual work on these documents year on year, these barriers can lead to Knowledge Organisers become ‘bolt ons’ rather than complements to learning, defeating their purpose of consolidation or ‘gap filling’.

 

Nathan Burns writes about the definition, purpose, advantages and disadvantages of the ‘grid’ Knowledge Organiser.

The ‘Grid’ Knowledge Organiser

I’m a Maths teacher, spreadsheet lover and a bit of a nerd. Is it any surprise therefore that I’m a big fan of the grid type of Knowledge Organiser? However, there are of course times and places for both types of Knowledge Organisers, and so hopefully over the next few paragraphs I’ll be able to clearly define the grid Knowledge Organiser, as well as the benefits and usability of such a document.

 

What is the grid Knowledge Organiser?

So, the grid type of Knowledge Organiser is fairly easy to explain. Information is organised within tables and grids, often with two columns including details such as key words, dates, definition, formulas and events. An example of how a Knowledge Organiser in the grid format might work for Maths is shown below.

 

What are the benefits of the grid Knowledge Organiser?

1)      A grid type Organiser allows us to avoid the textbook-esque appearance of the narrative type Organiser. With streams of sentences, paragraphs and an abundance of text, a narrative type Organiser can be incredibly overwhelming for students, not just with the sheer volume of text and not knowing where to go on the Organiser, but also from a cognitive load perspective.

2)      Due to the limited amount of text, the grid type Organiser is considerably clearer than most narrative type Organisers. It is far easier to align boxed and grids, making it not just more aesthetically pleasing, but again, simpler for students to access, and also limiting the cognitive strain on students.

3)      As briefly covered in the above two points, the ‘grid’ type Organiser is often considerably less daunting for students to access than a narrative type Organiser. With clearer boxes, headings and limited text, students are faced with less text and clearer signposting as to where they need to go to retrieve the information required. Of course, a narrative Organiser can have clear sections and headings, but it will always be more difficult to access an Organiser with greater amounts of content.

4)      Due to the limited amount of text that can be included within the grid type Organiser, it ensures that the focus on content within the Organiser is purely on the key fact that we would expect students to memorise. It is crucial to come back to this definition of the Knowledge Organiser – a document containing only facts which we would expect students to memorise and recall at any given point. By limiting the amount of text we can include within the Organiser, it allows us to prioritise the key information that we would expect students to memorise. Where limits are less of an issue in the narrative type Organiser, it is easier to include content that we might not expect students to memorise.

 

What are the weaknesses of the grid Knowledge Organiser

1)      It can be considerably more difficult to link together knowledge using a grid type Organiser. Where a narrative type Organiser has greater space for text and sentences, in the very fixed nature of the grids columns, it is difficult, nay, impossible to link together knowledge either within the Knowledge Organiser or between Knowledge Organisers (I.E. with other topics). So where the grid type Organiser is strong at keeping information limited and to the point, the inflexible nature of its headings and columns makes drawing links and comparisons impossible.

2)      One major advantage of the Knowledge Organiser more generally is its benefit in supporting students in catching up if they have missed a lesson, or where they are completing a lesson without the teachers support – for example, in isolation. However, and linking to the above point, the limited nature of the grid type Organiser means that students who are purely using that Organiser to support them in their learning will not have enough explanation or context to the facts on the document in order to apply them to their learning. Where the narrative type Organiser is based in context and provides links, it is more useful to students working independently.

 

Where is the grid Organiser helpful?

Where the grid Organiser might prove useful may now be jumping out at you. Where there is very clear and explicit set of facts to learn – such as key words and definitions, topics and formulas, dates and events – a grid type Organiser is the most useful way to present this information. It is far easy to present this type of information within a table that it is within sentences or mis-aligned boxes, anyway.

Where greater context is needed, or slightly lengthier explanations, such as the context to an event or such like, the narrative method of course is more suitable.

Perhaps in reality, the best Knowledge Organiser isn’t the grid type or even the narrative type. Perhaps a hybrid of both, with tables used where appropriate, and longer sentences and paragraphs used where appropriate, is the way forward? Horses for courses, as they say!

 

 

 

Becky Sayers is a faculty leader for Humanities at a 11-16 comprehensive school in Wiltshire

Nathan Burns is a teacher of Mathematics and KS3 Assistant Progress Leader at an 11-18 school near Nottingham.