Corgi Graphic Organizers

In today’s episode, we'll explore Corgi, a free, interactive graphic organizer tool from CAST designed for teachers and students. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

Paul Beckermann 0:01 Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I'm your host, Paul Beckermann.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 0:05 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:16 The topic of today's episode is Corgi, Graphic Organizers. Critical thinking is an important, durable skill for every student to develop, but it can be hard to both learn and teach.

Fortunately, our friends at CAST have developed a collection of free, interactive graphic organizers that teachers can use to help scaffold student development of critical thinking skills. The tool is called Corgi, and it uses the tagline "Co-organize Your Learning." In this episode, I'll be digging into Corgi and sharing what it is, how it works, and how you might use it with your students. Let's begin with what Corgi is.

Here's the tool for today. Essentially, Corgi is a collection of four interactive graphic organizers that students can use to make sense of their learning and guide them through critical thinking processes. Here's a breakdown of the four templates that are available: Cause and Effect Guide.

This guide helps students explore the relationship between an event, its causes, and its effects. Question Exploration Guide: This organizer helps students break down an essential question, respond to it, and connect that question to broader understandings. Comparison Guide: This third organizer helps students describe similarities and differences between two concepts. And Claim, Evidence, Reasoning Guide: This last guide encourages students to examine a claim and then determine if that claim is supported by evidence. These four options are not content specific, so they can be used in any classroom. Let's take a look at how Corgi works.

To begin, you need to set up a free account and allow limited access to your Google Drive, since the graphic organizer templates are utilizing free Google tools, Docs and Slides. You can find Corgi by navigating to Corgi2.cast.org (and the "two" is the number 2; Corgi, C-O-R-G-I-2, dot C-A-S-T.org).

Once you've set up your account, you can either choose a template lesson from the integrated lesson library, or you can create a new Corgi guide based on one of the four templates. If you choose the lesson library, you'll find that all of the sample lessons are aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards, so these are really good for science teachers. Even if you're not a science teacher, these lessons can provide templates and ideas that you can modify to meet the needs of your curricular area. If I decide I want to create my own guide, I'll click on one of the four template options, and then I'll give it a name.

I'm then taken to a screen that outlines the steps in the graphic organizer that I've chosen. For Cause and Effect, for example, I see that students will be guided through steps that include identifying an essential question, defining key terms in a main event, and then listing out causes, effects, and relationships between the items, before summarizing their learning and possibly engaging in an extension activity. If it helps to see a flowchart version of these steps, you can click on the Organizer tab on the left-hand side.

As a teacher, you can choose to pre-fill parts of the organizer or leave it blank for students to complete on their own. If you think students may need some specific directions or guidance along the way, you can add custom directions or resources for any of the steps in the organizer by clicking the Instruction tab on the left side.

For instance, if I wanted to provide some context for the essential question, I could add an explanation, additional directions, and even support media, such as an image, embedded YouTube video, or a link for my Google Drive. These can be helpful scaffolds for students who need a little extra support, and they can cut down on the number of questions that you'll need to answer as students work on the guide.

When you get the guide ready to share, you can click the Share icon at the bottom and share it in one of four ways. First, you can post it as an assignment to Google Classroom. Second, you can print it or save it as a PDF. Third, you can share the guide with a shareable Google link. Or fourth, you can transform the guide into a Google Slide presentation to share with your students. Students will have similar options when they complete their version of the guide, so you can have them use one of these features to submit their work to you.

If you use Google Classroom, the "turn in" option is integrated right into the process. If you use another learning management system, students could share their document or a link to that document through the classroom tool of your choice.

One additional note on using Corgi is that CAST has integrated several accessibility tools into the workspace. At the top, there are options to have text read aloud and also to be translated into Spanish. There's also an integrated dictionary that allows students to look up words that they might be unfamiliar with.

So how might you use an organizer like this with your students? Integration inspiration. Integration ideas.

Well, fortunately, Corgi has already thought of this question, and there's a button at the top called "How to Use Corgi" that not only takes you to a page of tutorials, but also provides integration ideas at the bottom of the page, in a section called Corgi Professional Learning Series. You'll find articles that range from tips for teachers to UDL and Corgi and using Corgi in different contexts. Here are five of the ideas that you'll find if you browse through the resources:

One, you might choose to use an "I do, we do, you do" approach and use the guide with the whole class. Two, you could have students complete a guide independently as an assignment or a processing activity. Three, you could have students complete the guide in groups, because these guides are built on the Google architecture. Files can be made editable by anyone with a link, allowing for collaboration.

Four, complete a guide as a way to develop thinking around a concept before converting it into the first draft of a slideshow. Students can then more fully develop their slideshow before sharing it with the class or a small group of students. And five, you could use it as a formative or summative assessment tool to measure how well students are processing a concept.

So overall, if you're looking to guide your students through the critical thinking process with the use of some sort of interactive graphic organizer, it's really worth your time to explore Corgi. It's free and user-friendly. I should also mention that if you are looking for other graphic organizers and templates built on either the Google or Microsoft platforms, I encourage you to check out the free options that we have at AVID Open Access as well. You can find shortcuts on the main page, or you can search for them with the keywords "templates" or "graphic organizers." There are over 100 of them available.

And of course, be sure to join Rena Winston and me every Wednesday for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we're joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening. Take care and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.