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: 

Preview/Predict: This column of the chart is used to activate or establish schema by guiding the students to make predictions. The teacher will have the students preview the concepts by looking at the access features and other clues. Based on what the students know from the access features, they will predict the purpose of the text.

 

Inquiry/Vocabulary: The students will brainstorm any possible questions the text may answer. The students can use their predictions as a springboard. The teacher can use the vocabulary to introduce key vocabulary words the students may not know.

 

After completing the vocabulary column, have the students read the text. After reading the text, return to the first two columns, Preview/Predict and Inquiry/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 facts that they noticed in the text. Go back to the questions generated and either confirm or disconfirm questions asked. If confirmed, include information into the Understandings column. If the questions weren't answered in the text, circle the questions. These questions can later be included in the Interpretations column.

 

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

 

Connections: In this column, the students will include any connections they made in the text 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 text. This can be a shape map, concept map, hierarchical map, Venn diagram, and etc. 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.