How To Teach Without Handouts
Cut down copier time and expand the learner's locus of control with simple and effective diagrams.
By Elijah Ammen
Just last week, I lived one of a teacher’s recurring nightmares. I came into work to find that every single copier in the building was broken. As our building went through social turmoil equivalent to the fall of the Roman Empire, I wondered how my students were going to receive the benefits of the beautiful guided notes, masterful graphic organizers, and rigorously aligned exit tickets I had prepared for them.
Somewhere after my initial panic, I stopped and thought—why am I a slave to this photocopying monster? Copiers and I have never had a mutually beneficial relationship—usually it just consumes incredible amounts of paper and spits ink back onto my dress clothes. It was at this point that I decided I wanted to teach without handouts—reducing my own stress, and allowing my classes to own their note-taking structures and better understand the information they are putting down, rather than mindlessly filling in blanks. If kids can create the organizers themselves, there is a better chance that they will be able to use these skills outside the classroom—which is, after all, the whole point.
The following are a few of a vast number of user-friendly graphs and note-taking strategies that students can replicate themselves.
Frayer Boxes
These little boxes are a thing of beauty. Originally, these are intended to break down vocabulary words. Students would write the word, draw a large box around the word, and then divide the box into quadrants. This allows the student to use the four quadrants to write the definition, part of speech, contextual sentence, and memory picture of the vocabulary word.
While these are perfect for vocabulary study, simple Frayer boxes work for any time you want to take one thing and break it down into smaller elements. For instance, if you are looking at the beginning of To Kill a Mockingbird, you can break down the beginning into four categories—setting, mood, tone, and foreshadowing, and classes can track those four elements as you work through the text. If you are studying indirect characterization, you can make inferences on four different characters. The possibilities are endless, but if you explicitly teach why we organize information, then students are more likely to look at this as an educational tool rather than busy work.
Check out this lesson plan for an example of Frayer boxes with U. S. History vocabulary, or this lesson for Frayer boxes with a scientific research lesson.
T-Charts
These charts are the oldest and simplest in the book. Put a line at the top and draw a line down the middle of the page. This makes your page into two columns (like a stenographer’s pad, for you old-schoolers). This is helpful in teaching cause and effect, whether in literature, history, or science. For instance, I had my classes start with an action that showed bias in a story by Walter Dean Myers, and had them trace the cause and effect of that action through the story in order to find the detrimental results of bias and assumptions.
This is also great for indirect characterization—the left column is the action, words, or thoughts of a character, and the right side is your inference about their character. This lesson plan examines the roles of a hero in myth in a t-chart, and this one compares dreams and actions in Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
Venn Diagrams
In English, this is one of the most tested diagrams. It is essential for middle and high schoolers to be very comfortable with reading and creating these charts. You can start off simple with two overlapping circles and compare two different groups of characters in a book, such as the Greasers and Socials in The Outsiders. You can move on and compare two different stories or genres, to find out what elements are the same or different. One common state standard is comparing the same story across multiple mediums—whether print, film, or painting. Your classes can compare Shakespeare’s plays versus a stage adaptation and see how faithful they were to the original.
Once you have comparing and contrasting two elements down, you can throw in a third. This is useful to synthesize multiple works in a unit. Often students don’t recognize the connections that you so painstakingly planned for every unit—so have them compare and contrast the last three things they read in your class. For multiple examples of Venn diagrams in action, check out this list of worksheets that could be used for modeling.
Semantic Mapping/Bubble Charts
This process might be the most difficult to get buy-in from your classes. Some people are wired to think this way, while others appreciate a more linear approach. Semantic mapping, sometimes better known as bubble charts, allows you to start with a word or concept and follow every train of thought as far as you want. Each bubble connects back to a previous bubble and ultimately leads back to your original word or concept. This graph gives a great, simple example that you can use to model for your classes.
This is a great note-taking strategy (and one I personally use), because it allows the note-taker to make connections between ideas rather than chronologically logging how the information is given. This works well with visual learners in particular, because it maps out the thoughts in a way that makes sense visually.
It is also a great brainstorming strategy. If students are trying to figure out the meaning of a word, they can start with the word and follow every train of thought that they know—how have they heard it used, what other words does it remind them of, are there any prefixes or suffixes attached? It also works with brainstorming a plan. If students have to complete a project, they can think of all the different ways to accomplish the project, and then compare the different ways. This teaches processes and helps students think in logical cause and effect chains, rather than traditional bullet points.
Lesson Planet Resources:
Find major themes to the preamble of the Constitution by using Frayer boxes on the key vocabulary. It not only builds vocabulary, but connects to higher-level inferences.
Use Frayer boxes as a way of presenting information gained in research. This presentation uses the boxes for characteristics, non-characteristics, examples, and non-examples.
Very simple graph to explain the concept of semantic mapping. This would be an excellent place to start before modeling a semantic map.
Organize well known public figures into t-charts of heroes and non-heroes as a kick-off to developing a criteria for being a hero.
Use this as guided notes when going through MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech. This t-chart helps show how dreams motivate actions, and how beliefs influenced activism.