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Check out videos you can send to students to watch independently: Getting Students Started, How to Build a CERCA, and Writing Lesson Instructions for Students.
Teaching students to organize their ideas is essential for helping them produce cohesive academic writing. Whether students are writing narratives, arguments, or explanatory pieces, they can use graphic organizers to take notes, support their understanding of a text, and plan their writing. To make it faster and easier for students to engage in these practices, ThinkCERCA has curated our most-requested graphic organizers below:
CERCA Graphic Organizers
These graphic organizers support students in organizing their ideas before completing Step 5 of ThinkCERCA’s Writing Lesson.
CERCA Graphic Organizer - Analyzing an Article
English & Spanish (3rd - 5th Grade)
English & Spanish (6th - 12th Grade)
Before, During, and After Reading
These charts support students as they go through the process of reading, making connections within the text, and encourage more research or investigation on a topic.
Summarizing
These graphic organizers help students pull out main ideas and key supporting details as they engage with reading and analyzing a text.
Writing Narratives
These graphic organizers support students in planning and drafting the main components of their narrative writing.
Beginning, Middle, and End Chart
Informative Writing
This graphic organizer supports students in planning and drafting the main components of their informative writing response.
Understanding Connections within a Text
These graphic organizers provide students with guided structures to examine a variety of relationships among information, individuals, events, and ideas in a text: chronological, cause-and-effect, or problem-and-solution.
Argumentative Essay Templates
These essay templates can be used to help students use the CERCA framework to write a full-length essay. Use them as a suggestion for the structure of a CERCA-based 1, 3, or 5-paragraph essay.
5-Paragraph Template (with Counterargument)
All-Purpose
These blank graphic organizers are provided for you to structure and customize to whatever your students are currently learning about. Use them as compare-contrast, KWL, sequencing, or anything else appropriate to your current instructional focus.