Anne Ford (2007) once said that “learning disabilities cannot be cured, but they can be treated successfully” (p. 1). Can teachers actually treat students with learning disabilities successfully? Is there a tactic that teachers can employ to aid students understand and grasp content? Years and years of research have indicated that students with learning disabilities (LD) face significant challenges in comprehending and organizing information from text. Students encounter greater difficulty at the advanced reading stage (reading to learn) because there is an increase in the amount of information in the content areas that they are expected to master (Gajria, Jitendra, Sood and Sacks, 2007).

One of the problematic areas for children with learning disabilities is the manner in which textbooks are written. Very often textbooks are written above student’s reading level and lack explicit organization of concepts. As a result, students are unable to make sense of vocabulary, text patterns and structure. They are faced with the ultimate challenge of extracting meaning from text/content. This is where graphic organizers come to the rescue. Gajria et al. (2007) elaborated that graphic organizers make material that are difficult to understand more accessible to students with learning disabilities. This technique “helps students understand where they have been, where they are and where they are going to on their journey through content” (Boudah, Lenz, Bulgren, Schumaker & Deshler, 2000, p. 2). In short, graphic organizers present concepts in a memorable way that can significantly enhance student’s comprehension of information as well as acquisition of content in subject areas such as Social Studies and Science.

According to Meyen, Vergason andWhelan (1996) graphic organizers are “visual displays teachers use to organize information in a manner that makes information easier

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to understand and learn” (p.132). There are several types of graphic organizers. Some examples include semantic maps, cognitive maps, story maps, concept maps, Venn diagrams and unit organizers. Researchers agree that graphic organizers are effective tools that can improve student’s performance in content areas. Therefore, this paper will delve into answering the following questions:

1. How do graphic organizers enhance comprehension?

2. How can graphic organizers enhance the acquisition of content in Social Studies?

3. Why use graphic organizers in Science?

The paper ends with a discussion on the implications of findings, a brief summary and the reviewers’ assessment of usefulness and benefits of graphic organizers in enhancing comprehension and acquisition of content.

How Do Graphic Organizers Enhance Comprehension?
Over the past thirty years, reading comprehension has been one of the major foci of

research. Williams (2005) acknowledged that “children with learning disabilities often experience severe problems in comprehending ... texts despite decoding skills” (p. 8). To ameliorate this problem, teachers can provide comprehension interventions through the use of semantic maps, concept diagrams and story maps.

Semantic maps are visual devices that students can use to derive implicit and explicit meaning from ideas, concepts and details in text (Boyle & Weishaar, 1997).This strategy increases students’ understanding by helping them acquire, maintain and organize information. One way that this strategy can be used, is by presenting students with a completed semantic map depicting the key words and concepts of a passage. They should then read each paragraph. After finding the main ideas in the passage, students

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should link these key ideas to those on the map. This modus operandi provides the scaffolding that students with LD require. Research indicates that “semantic maps ... outperformed conventional reading techniques on comprehension tests” (Kim, Vaughn, Wanzek and Wei, 2004, p. 112).

In addition, the use of semantic maps enables students to focus on key vocabulary and concepts that will enhance reading comprehension. When using this strategy, teachers should activate student’s prior knowledge. For instance, in teaching the concept “whales”, teachers can trigger background knowledge by showing a video on whales and then allowing students to suggest key words that relate to the topic (See Appendix I). Students can actively participate in creating a semantic map that depicts major concepts being studied. A research synthesis conducted by Kim et al. (2004) illustrated that semantic organizers when compared to other instructional strategies (e.g., dictionary instruction) significantly improved comprehension skills of students with learning disabilities.

Another effective graphic organizer that can be used to improve comprehension skills is concept diagrams. Concept diagrams visually present the relationship among concepts. According to Cesarone (2007), concept diagrams are “chart-like graphic that describes a concept and its various relationships, with general concepts at the top, supporting concepts at the bottom, and lines showing the connections between the concepts” (p. 191). This method enables students to add new information to existing schema. Cesarone (2007) recommended that concept diagrams be used with students with LD, as these students encounter tremendous difficulty in expressing and linking ideas. Moreover, this technique can be used to evaluate students understanding of information, by asking

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students to create their own concept diagrams. This would enable the teacher to see “misdirected links or wrong connections” (Helfgott, 2007, p. 1). Helfgott (2007) elaborated that concept diagrams provide an “accurate, objective way to evaluate areas students have not grasped” (p. 1). The multiple ways that this strategy can be used to increase comprehension makes it a necessary tool in all classrooms.

Furthermore, concept diagrams allow students to focus on pivotal concepts necessary to enhance comprehension. It facilitates understanding of definitions, characteristics and uses of concepts (Vaughn & Edmonds, 2006). The following procedures can be used when implementing concept diagrams. After reading a passage, students are presented with a blank concept diagram. The teacher explains the various parts of the diagram; and together (both teacher and students) highlights the principal concepts in the passage. This can be done through overt modeling. Students can be prompted to furnish instances and non-instances of the concept. This will facilitate active involvement as they write the concepts on the diagrams (Vaughn & Edmonds, 2006). An example of a concept diagram can be seen in Appendix II.

Finally, the use of story maps has been proven effective in improving reading comprehension with students with learning disabilities. This strategy allows students to systematically identify important story elements such as characters, plot and setting. DiCecco and Gleason (2002) stated that story maps improve students’ literal, interpretative and applied comprehension skills. They elaborated that this method assists in learning new vocabulary as well as recall information from a story. In fact, it helps students pay attention to important parts of a story. One way to use this approach is by the teacher reading a story and stopping at strategic points. Each stop contains questions

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