Title: What is a Graphic Organizer?
Course: Accommodations to Support Written Language

variety of examples

Graphic organizers are visual representations of knowledge, concepts or ideas. When used, they are known to help clarify information, assist in organizing thoughts and promote understanding. For a disabled student struggling with writing tasks, a graphic organizer can be a "road map" to the completion of curriculum activities.

Graphic organizer are built-in to some of the literacy suites of software, providing flexible framework, structure and the visual cues to organize and prioritize information. It is valuable is writing necessary in language arts, science and/or social studies.

This graphic organizer (Kidspiration) provides picture support to help perhaps the younger or cognitively disabled writer. Text can be typed directly in the bubbles and clicking on the outline function will create a writing outline template with individual information entered in correct locations.

Picture support can continue, if needed by the student, even into more complex writing assignments.

As skill is gained, support can be reduced by eliminating the pictures, but the framework for writing remains.