Knowledge organisers can sometimes divide opinion. They take time to produce and are sometimes dismissed as a vehicle for rote learning without understanding. They can potentially lead to ‘inflexible knowledge’ where, if students only ever encounter knowledge in one format, they struggle to recognise it in any other way. This can lead to shallow learning, and simplistic mental models. In my experience, however, when used effectively, knowledge organisers can be absolutely invaluable.
We began to introduce knowledge organisers at my school over three years ago, as part of a radical curriculum overhaul. We wanted students to have a clear view of everything they needed to learn and an effective tool to help them to know more and remember more. We were also developing our approach to retrieval practice, so knowledge organisers were a logical choice for our curriculum development in terms of both intent and implementation. Like all sustainable strategies, the way we use knowledge organisers has developed over time – we have adapted and refined this work following the EEF’s ‘Putting Evidence to Work: A School’s Guide to Implementation‘ . After creating an evidence-informed template design, and training students to self-quiz using a very basic ‘Look, Cover, Write, Check‘ method, we realised that we were only scratching the surface. The potential of knowledge organisers is vast.
Having a huge increase in how many and how often our students were self-quizzing was great to start with, because they went from doing no retrieval practice under their own steam, to at least doing something. But we quickly began to realise that it wasn’t really helping them to understand what it was they were now able to recall more fluently. We also began to see some of the signs of inflexible knowledge described above. A lot of reading, researching, and conversations with colleagues from other schools helped us to crystalise a strategy to mitigate those issues.
Our approach empowers students to use their knowledge organisers independently and is supplemented by a wide range of rehearsal and retrieval work done in the classroom. Each faculty/subject area has developed their own ways of doing this. Science, for example, uses ‘Carousel Learning‘, whereas other areas build retrieval into their schemes in other ways. This ensures that students encounter the knowledge they need in many different formats which is vital to building sophisticated mental models. It also gives students greater flexibility in terms of how they can recognise and understand the knowledge they have learned.
A significant strength of our approach, I think, lies in the fact that knowledge organisers are most certainly not a bolt-on. They are integral to our curriculum planning, and to our wider priorities around metacognition, home learning, retrieval practice, and literacy. Working with my supremely knowledgeable colleague, Nikki Sullivan, we have developed a method for using knowledge organisers called: ‘Quiz It, Link It, Map It, Shrink It‘ (QILIMISI). This forms one element of what we term our ‘Knowledgeable and Expert Learners Framework’. The framework also incorporates our approach to home learning. Students are given Independent Learning Booklets (ILBs) each half-term. The ILBs are produced collaboratively, in school, and among other things, contain every knowledge organiser they need for the half-term, along with spaces to complete the QILIMISI activities. These activities sit on pages in a repeating pattern as follows:
Quiz It: Students fill in pre-identified parts of their blank knowledge organisers, from memory, and use the completed version to check and correct. We use ‘Look, Cover, Write, Check’ for rehearsal (if students are encountering the knowledge for the first time) or Just ‘Cover, Write, Check’ for retrieval practice (to ensure students are definitely recalling from memory). This is an adaptation from our original self-quizzing approach which did not sufficiently discriminate between rehearsal and retrieval.
Link It: Students choose 2-6 items from their knowledge organisers and write three sentences to show how they link together. This could be any combination of a compare/contrast statement, a cause/effect statement, or a support/refute statement. Students are also encouraged to explain these statements using ‘because…’. This helps them to develop their understanding and make more sophisticated connections in their schema.
Map It: Students choose an appropriate way to represent the knowledge from a section or topic with a graphic organiser. They choose from an initial selection of four, which we magpied from the brilliant Oliver Caviglioli’s work. Students start off with these four (mind-maps for categorising knowledge, flow-sprays for sequencing knowledge, flow sprays for showing similarities and differences, and fish-bone diagrams for showing cause and effect) but can then diversify as they progress/become more skilled.
Shrink It: Students are taught to summarise effectively through our literacy strategy, ‘Read Like a Beckfooter‘ which is led by the wonderful Luke Parkinson. Students employ a simple, four-step technique to write a summary of the topic they are working on. Being able to effectively summarise a topic or knowledge group, illustrates students’ understanding and ensures they are thinking hard as they select the most important points to include.
QILIMISI is explicitly taught through our metacognition tutor programme, which is designed by Katie Holmes to equip all students with the key skills and understanding of how we learn to be able to succeed. It is also explained clearly for students and their families in our ILBs, and supported by video walkthroughs which can be accessed on our websites, Home Learning page. As part of our wider approach to Home Learning, we encourage students to do 20 mins of QILIMISI (independent learning) a day, alongside their regular homework tasks. Students have some discretion in choosing the topic, and activity they want to work on, but because the options are finite, over a half-term there is a natural variation which ensures they cannot just pick one activity and only ever do that.
We launched the current permutation of our knowledge organiser strategy in June last year and so far, we are seeing a real improvement in both the amount and the quality of students’ independent learning. Feedback tells us that knowledge organisers are highly valued by staff, students, and their families. Of course, this strategy in and of itself does not entirely negate the problems of inflexible knowledge, but as part of a wider curriculum, which incorporates a broad range of different encounters with that knowledge, we’re getting closer.
As with any strategy, the success comes down to how you adapt and refine it to suit your own context, but hopefully you can take some inspiration from the work we have done in ours. The following tips might be a good place to start:
- Design a knowledge organiser template and stick to it. This reduces cognitive load for students and staff.
- Ensure your knowledge organisers specifically reflect the key knowledge in your curriculum. While using pre-made knowledge organisers might be tempting as a way to save workload, it defeats the real purpose. Adapting those you find elsewhere might be a happy medium.
- Decide how you want students to use their knowledge organisers. Teach this explicitly and repeatedly. Make it routine.
- Carefully consider how you will support students’ understanding. Plan a variety of other encounters with the knowledge that require students to think hard.
- Make knowledge organisers high profile, and regularly refer to them in lessons. They should be an integral part of your curriculum.
Ultimately, knowledge organisers are just one of many options available to us to enable students to know more and remember more: I would never suggest that they are the only way to go. Like anything else, their success depends on a strong implementation plan, and carefully considered content. I would argue though, that with a clear strategy for their use, which is understood by all, they can be hugely beneficial.
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