Graphic Organisers: The 5 Points of the Star

A previous post outlined the basic ideas underpinning the graphic organiser, introduced an example of the genre (the Frayer Model) and teased the possibility of further examples of ready-made organiser templates (as opposed to the more free-form examples you can find in the Revision section here).

So, in the spirit of actually trying to deliver what may or may not have been promised (about which I can unfortunately make no further promises) I thought I’d start with what I consider one of the most potentially-useful: the “5-Point Star” template.

And when I say “start” I’m suggesting there will be more examples to follow.

Which indeed there may well be.

I’ll see what I can do.

Anyway, back to the example at hand which, once again, I’ve created as a simple PowerPoint Presentation for your classroom display purposes (or whatever you actually do with all the PowerPoints I produce). A further advantage of this format is that you can export the organiser as a pdf file to individual students. Alternatively, once they know what it involves (basically, a 5-point star and 5 further boxes…) they can draw their own free-hand versions.

This particular organiser involves stating a central idea (the Star) and then identifying / elaborating / explaining 5 key aspects of that idea. It’s simple and, I trust, rather effective.

You might, for example, ask students to focus on “5 Points of Functionalism” as a way of instilling some of the key ideas related to this perspective.

The organiser works well with quite large categories, such as sociological perspectives, that students really need to be able to distil into a few key ideas. It’s also a particularly useful organiser for essay revision and planning because it forces students to focus on a relatively limited number of points which they then have to develop as part of their overall answer.