What: GO! Chart is a graphic organizer that encourages students to activate higher levels of thinking before, during, and after reading a text. The teacher guides the students through oral discussions designed to build topic knowledge before reading; identify vocabulary words, share understandings, develop interpretations, and make connections that occur during reading; and organize their final thoughts into a summary at the end.

Who: GO! Charts can be used with students in grades PreK through 8th grade.

When: This strategy is used before, during, and after reading. It can be used with students in small groups, or in whole group. GO! Charts may take several days to complete depending on the complexity of the text.

Why: GO! Charts help students to dig deeper into their reading in order to develop higher levels of understanding. This strategy demonstrates to the students the metacognitive process readers experience before, during, and after reading a text.

How: The teacher selects a book for the class to complete their GO! Chart on during whole group instruction. The class fills out the GO! Chart column-by-column as described below:

Predictions: This column of the chart introduces the story and activates schema. Students make predictions about the story using the title, cover, illustrations, etc. The teacher will write the students predictions along with a rationale for the prediction on the chart.

Vocabulary: In this column have the students make predictions of the vocabulary words the author might use in this text to develop the story as predicted. Students should be able to make connections between the words predicted and the predictions of the story made previously. At the bottom of this column, if needed, the teacher will introduce any uncommon words found in the story.

After completing the vocabulary column, have the students will read the story. After reading the story, return to the first two columns, Predictions and Vocabulary, to either confirm or disconfirm their predictions.

The next three columns are used to guide students in exploring their comprehension. The teacher will guide the students through the discussion as the students share their responses to the follow prompts.

Understandings: In this column, the students will share anything they noticed in the text that they found to be important. For example, the students may decide to share information about the characters (traits, characteristics), setting, plot, and etc.

Interpretations: The Interpretations are the things that the students wondered during the text that wasn't necessarily explained in the story.

Connections: In this column, the students will include any connections they made in the story. The students can include information that reminded them of something they experienced, something they've read about before, something they've seen before, and etc.

Organize: In this final column, the class will use a graphic organizer to help organize the story. Students can select the graphic organizer that they prefer to use in this column. Have the students revisit their facts from the Understandings column to determine which graphic organizer would be the most appropriate. Work with the students to complete the graphic organizer and organize the facts.