Setting the Stage Before the Lesson Begins: Advance Organizers

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Setting the Stage Before the Lesson Begins: Advance Organizers

Educational Psychology · Chapter 9: Instructional Strategies and Effective Teaching PracticeSection 9.6 · lesson 88 of 1008 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Advance organizers, KWL charts, anticipation guides, and the cognitive hook.

  • Define an advance organizer in Ausubel's terms
  • Distinguish expository from comparative organizers
  • Use KWL charts and anticipation guides
  • Explain why organizers work, through schema theory

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,090 words). Read along, or search it.

Instructional Strategies and Effective Teaching Practice

Setting the Stage Before the Lesson Begins

The first two minutes of a lesson do more work than most teachers realize. Not because of attention, but because of structure. New information needs somewhere to attach itself. This section is about building that attachment point in advance. We start with Ausubel's concept of the advance organizer. Then two types: expository, and comparative. Then two practical classroom tools that operationalize them. The KWL chart, and the anticipation guide. And finally why any of this works, through schema theory. One warning before we begin, because it is a common error. An advance organizer is not a summary of the lesson to come.

The Problem

What If the Structure Isn't There Yet?

Recall Ausubel's central argument from the previous section. Learning is meaningful only when new knowledge connects. Connects to cognitive structures the learner already has. That argument leads directly to an awkward question. What if students simply lack the relevant structures? The advance organizer is Ausubel's answer to that question. It is introductory material presented before the lesson. It provides a framework into which new information can be anchored. So it either creates the mental scaffolding, or activates it. Whichever the student needs on that particular day. And then the lesson has somewhere to land.

What It Is Not

Not a Summary, Outline, or Review

It is worth being precise about what an organizer is not. It is not a summary. It is not an outline. It is not a review. Advance organizers operate at a higher level of abstraction. And a higher level of generality than the material to follow. Consider a lesson on cell division. The organizer would not preview mitosis and meiosis. It might instead be about biological reproduction and growth. The general concept, sitting above the specific mechanisms. That gives students a conceptual framework first. Before the specific details of mitosis and meiosis arrive. The organizer primes the cognitive schema. It does not replace or pre-teach the lesson content itself.

Type One

Expository Organizers, for Brand New Content

Ausubel identified two types, for two different situations. Expository organizers come first. They introduce completely new material. Material students have no prior knowledge of at all. They provide a simplified, highly abstract model of what is coming. The purpose is to give students a cognitive anchor. Take a lesson on parliamentary government. Most students have no schema for that whatsoever. So the teacher presents an organizer about representative decision-making. A general concept students can grasp from student councils. Or from how decisions get made in their own families. Notice the move being made there. It reaches for an experience the student already has.

Type Two

Comparative Organizers, When Knowledge Exists

Comparative organizers are for the opposite situation. They are used when students already have relevant prior knowledge. They explicitly highlight similarities and differences. Between what students know, and what they are about to learn. Here is the example the source gives. A teacher introduces Spanish grammar to students who know French. A comparative organizer maps the shared structures. Gendered nouns, and verb conjugation. While flagging key differences at the same time. Such as different irregular verb patterns. That does two things simultaneously. It prevents interference between the two systems. And it deepens analogical reasoning.

KWL

Three Columns, Low Preparation

Two practical tools make these principles usable on a Monday. The first is the KWL chart. That stands for Know, Want to know, and Learned. It is a three-column graphic organizer. Students begin by identifying what they already know. That is the K column, and it is the activation step. Then they articulate what they want to find out. The W column. After instruction, they record what they have learned. So one simple chart is doing three jobs. It activates prior knowledge, and focuses curiosity. And it structures reflection after the learning has happened. It is versatile, low-preparation, and works across grade levels.

Anticipation Guides

Surfacing the Wrong Belief on Purpose

The second tool is the anticipation guide. It presents students with a series of statements. Statements about upcoming content, some true and some false. All of this happens before instruction begins. Students agree or disagree with each one. Based purely on their current understanding. Then they revisit their responses after the lesson. These are particularly powerful for one kind of topic. Topics that carry well-known misconceptions. By surfacing incorrect beliefs before instruction begins, teachers create cognitive dissonance in the student. And that dissonance motivates close attention to the lesson.

Five Tools

Which Organizer, and When

Five organizer types, each suited to a different situation. An expository organizer is for students with no prior knowledge. Introducing parliamentary government is the example. A comparative organizer is for when prior knowledge exists. Teaching Spanish after French is the example. A KWL chart activates prior knowledge and structures reflection. Use it at any new unit introduction. An anticipation guide is for when misconceptions are common. Science topics with embedded myths are the obvious case. And a concept map shows relationships between ideas. Use it to open a complex, multi-concept unit. The choice is driven by what students bring, not by preference.

Why They Work

The Schema Theory Connection

So why does any of this actually work? Consider what happens without a cognitive hook. New information enters working memory as isolated data. Unconnected to anything already there. And it is quickly forgotten, because nothing holds it. Advance organizers create the hook in advance. They activate existing schemas, or build temporary ones. Either way, the brain gets a filing system. A system to which new knowledge can be meaningfully attached. Ausubel had a term for that attachment process. Subsumption. New information integrated under existing, more general concepts.

Classroom Example

Ten Statements Before the Ecosystem Unit

Here is an anticipation guide running in a real classroom. Before a unit on ecosystems, a teacher distributes a guide. It contains ten statements about the upcoming content. One reads: producers make their own food. Another reads: a food chain can have unlimited links. Students mark agree or disagree, without any help. Then the class discusses the disagreements. Those disagreements are the misconceptions, made visible. After the unit is finished, they revisit the same guide. And that revisit is what makes the tool memorable. The contrast between before and after makes learning visible. The student watches their own mind change, in their own handwriting.

Key Idea

Build the Bridge, Do Not Rebuild the Bank

One test tells you whether an advance organizer is any good. The most powerful organizer meets students exactly where they are. It neither re-teaches what they already know. Nor leaps ahead to what they do not know yet. It builds a bridge between those two places. Which explains why there are two types rather than one. Expository and comparative are not competing preferences. They are different bridges, for different starting banks. There is a name for what all of this is doing. Bridging. Explicitly connecting new content to what students already know. Everything here is a way of doing that before the lesson.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Setting the Stage Before the Lesson Begins: Advance Organizers

What is an advance organizer?
An advance organizer, a concept from David Ausubel, is introductory material presented before a lesson that gives students a framework for anchoring new information. It works at a higher level of abstraction and generality than the content that follows. For a lesson on cell division, for example, the organizer might address biological reproduction and growth rather than previewing mitosis and meiosis.
What is the difference between expository and comparative advance organizers?
An expository organizer introduces completely new material by giving students a simplified, abstract model to anchor it, while a comparative organizer is used when students already have related knowledge and highlights similarities and differences. A lesson on parliamentary government might start from familiar representative decision-making, while Spanish taught to French speakers might map shared gendered nouns and verb conjugation and flag the differences.
How does a KWL chart work?
A KWL chart is a three-column organizer in which students list what they already Know, what they Want to know, and, after instruction, what they Learned. The K column activates prior knowledge, the W column focuses curiosity, and the L column structures reflection. It needs little preparation and works across grade levels, which makes it a common opener for a new unit.
Is an advance organizer the same as a summary or outline?
No, an advance organizer is not a summary, outline or review of the material to come. It sits above that content as a more general concept that primes students' schemas without pre-teaching details. In Ausubel's terms, this lets new information be subsumed, or integrated under existing, more general concepts, instead of entering working memory as isolated data that is quickly forgotten.

About the Educational Psychology course

How many college credits is Educational Psychology?
Educational Psychology (Psychology 120) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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