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How typically do you encounter college students who can memorize phrases however battle to use them in context? What if there was a device that might not solely assist college students keep in mind vocabulary but in addition deeply perceive and apply these ideas? This device just isn’t new however may be one of the crucial underutilized in our instructing arsenal. Let’s check out how the Frayer Mannequin can bridge the hole between rote memorization and true conceptual understanding.
What’s the Frayer Mannequin?
The Frayer Mannequin is a graphic organizer that was initially developed by Dorothy Frayer and her colleagues on the College of Wisconsin in 1969. It was a part of a mission to seek out efficient methods of instructing highschool college students new ideas. However, it’s a useful graphic organizer for college kids all the way in which down by means of early elementary. Since all of us have ideas and tutorial vocabulary to show which are foundational to our content material space, the Frayer Mannequin is an ideal device to construct into as you scaffold college students’ understanding and mastery of important items of your content material. Initially, the Frayer Mannequin was meant for use for college kids in studying and language arts. Nonetheless, it quickly grew to become common to be used in different content material areas as properly.
The Advantages of the Frayer Mannequin

The Frayer Mannequin provides a number of benefits that may enormously improve scholar studying. Loads of analysis underscores the worth of utilizing the Frayer Mannequin along with your college students at acceptable instances. Listed here are a few of the advantages:
- Improves comprehension: It breaks down complicated ideas into extra manageable components, which helps college students perceive and keep in mind particulars higher.
- Helps numerous studying types: It additionally helps all learners, making it a superb device for lecture rooms with numerous studying types and skills.
- Encourages lively studying: College students who interact immediately with the fabric usually tend to retain info and perceive it deeply.
- Facilitates classroom discussions: The Frayer Mannequin supplies a structured manner for college kids to share ideas and study from one another.
The Graphic Organizer
Within the heart of the graphic organizer is the principle idea or vocabulary phrase. Every outdoors quadrant is designated for a specific facet of the educational that you really want your college students to study. Historically these have been designated for the definition, traits of the phrase/idea, examples, and non-examples. Based mostly on what you’re instructing, you possibly can change the quadrants to be extra related if wanted to help extra focused studying…corresponding to utilizing the phrase in a sentence, drawing an image of the phrase/idea, and so forth.
Whereas this has historically been a paper-pencil exercise, we will simply carry the Frayer Mannequin into the digital age. Entry the Frayer Mannequin Template utilizing Google Slides and adapt it to make it your individual! You’ll discover that the template consists of a number of completely different examples for various grade ranges and content material areas to get you began. Think about using this as you examine for prior information, introduce important ideas, and even as an exit ticket on the finish of a lesson. You possibly can additionally use this with digital instruments like Figjam, Canva, PowerPoint, Microsoft Whiteboard, or Excalidraw.
Utilizing the Frayer Mannequin Template
There are a number of methods to make use of the template. Earlier than sharing, you might wish to adapt the examples to your grade stage and content material space to assist college students higher perceive with related examples that they will seek advice from as wanted. These directions are given for utilizing the template inside Google Slides however will be tailored for different platforms.
Methodology 1: Utilizing the Template with a Complete Group
Share the Frayer Mannequin template with the category giving everybody edit rights. Instruct them to every create a brand new slide (whether or not individually or working with a accomplice). They need to first kind their title within the prime space to designate that the slide is theirs to edit. Assign every scholar (or pair) a phrase or idea to find out about. As they study concerning the idea or phrase, they replace their slide. Others can touch upon quadrants and provides further insights, examples, non-examples, and so forth. Utilizing the template on this method makes it nice for check assessment. It can be the equal of a digital phrase wall that college students can entry on their gadgets when wanted.
Methodology 2: Utilizing the Template with Particular person College students
Replace the template slide deck as wanted. Have college students make a replica of the slide deck to their Google Drive, share a replica with them immediately, or present a “make a replica” hyperlink. Direct college students so as to add a brand new slide for every phrase/idea and start filling them in. Be at liberty to adapt the quadrants as wanted. For instance, change the non-example quadrant to now have college students insert a picture of the phrase or idea. Or they will discover and share a YouTube video concerning the phrase or idea as a useful resource.
No matter what you train and the grade stage(s), be sure you add the Frayer Mannequin to your trainer bag of excellent pedagogy methods. These are nice helps for ESL college students and will be tailored for presented college students to increase past the common expectations.


