Advance+Organizers

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** Advance Organizers is a theory developed by David Ausbel in 1960. He was very adamant about proving advance organizers help facilitate learning. Many people are skeptical as to if these are effective, but many people do agree with this method. Ausbel states that advance organizers represent one strategy to address the subsumption theory; learning is based upon the kinds of subordiante, representational, and combinatorial processes that occur during the reception of information. **


 * **Theory** || **Scope of Theory** || **Mechanisms of Theory** || **Implications for Teaching** || **Relevance to Special Education** ||
 * Ausubel’s learning theory || This theory accounts for making meaningful learning through reception or discovery learning. || In order for learning to be meaningful, the learner must employ a meaningful learning set to the task (meaning, not memorization), the information to be learned must be potentially useful, and prior knowledge must be related to what is asked of students to learn. || Ausubel’s learning theory affects teaching and learning mainly by the cognitive organization within the learner. The teacher must properly activate prior knowledge and relate current/future learning in order to make connections and meaningful learning. || Though Ausubel’s learning theory may not be directly visible in special education classrooms, there are some aspects present. Students’ learning improves with their ability to relate to current learning. By activating prior knowledge, students better relate to the task. ||

What Does an Advance Organizer do?
**These organizers are perfect for finding out what a student already knows about a topic and then it allows us teachers to connect new ideas to their pre-existing knowledge. Advance organizers are like guided notes. The gist of it is that you are giving guided notes. Before a lesson, you can hand the students a handout with what they will be learning over the course of the lesson and they may fill it out as they go along learning more and more. It keeps students involved during instruction and it also helps with the students who may have difficulty taking notes on their own.

The "KWL" chart, is a perfect example of an advance organizer.**



[|Click Here For Additional Information on KWL Charts]

How Can You Implement an Advance Organizer?
**Using this in instruction may seem too much, but it gets students actively engaged and gets their minds thinking. It also gives you, the teacher, a little bit more of an understanding at what the students already know. For example, you may use a KWL chart when learning about the invention of the telephone. Have every student take a three-folded paper as seen above and label it KWL, K for what I know, W for what I want to know, and then L for what I learned. Then, integrating technology, you as the teacher will do a KWL chart on the smart-board in your classroom and students can collaborate and talk about what they know and what they want to know. Then the last column can be filled out at the end of the lesson. This not only is a different type of note taking strategy, but it can also be a way of assessing the students knowledge gained from the days lesson. **

**Here Is An Example of A Teacher Implementing a KWL Chart in her Instruction:**
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