To KO or not to KO? Knowledge organisers in primary languages

During these months of lockdown and working at home there has been a lot of discussion and reflection on Twitter and in the Facebook groups - primary and secondary - about Knowledge Organisers.  They are becoming more prevalent in both primary and secondary education across the curriculum.

In the primary languages context, there have been two main questions.  Firstly, what are knowledge organisers, and secondly, should we be using them?  I'll try to answer those questions:

What is a Knowledge Organiser (KO)?

• A single A4 sheet containing a summary of the essential knowledge from a unit of work
• It needs to be specific to your children in your class, and should follow your scheme of work.  An "off the peg" KO might not suit your children and your school.
• It should contain what you are going to teach and nothing extra.
• It shows the Intent of your curriculum, and may also determine the Implementation to a certain extent.
• A series of KOs should show progression.
• KOs show the big picture of a unit of learning. 
• A KO is low-tech and therefore easy to share with parents and carers if necessary.  Being paper-based means that there are no barriers to learning if a certain child can't access technology.
• KOs are characteristic of the current Ofsted and DfE focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum, and acquiring and retaining subject knowledge.
• There is no set format for a KO.  A KO for languages should probably include key vocabulary plus any essential facts or structures presented in manageable chunks.  They often contain model texts and can have images as appropriate.  It's important that the KO also contains English meanings to reduce the cognitive load and to help children to use them effectively.  "Dodgy English" is often used to emphasise structure in the target language, for example "Tengo hambre = I have hunger".  Above all, the KO should be engaging and clear, so that the children can use them easily and regularly.
• KOs are not a magic solution to teaching languages - they should be seen as another tool in your kit.  They are one of the solutions to problems of retention and memory.

Why should I think about using them?

• Having a KO to hand means that children won't have to hold so much information in their working memory.  They reduce cognitive overload.
• Having a KO to hand enables children to constantly review their learning.  They should have the opportunity to look at and become familiar with the KOs and practise retrieving the information.
• They save time for the teacher in the classroom - if the children all have a KO you won't have to answer as many questions!
• Children who have more prior knowledge of a unit are likely to learn more from the teaching of it.  The new knowledge hooks onto the "pre-knowledge" and becomes sticky.  Knowing the big picture of the learning we are more likely to make links and help the knowledge to stick.
• If a child is absent or goes out for intervention, having the KO means that they will have what they need to catch up.

My opinion:

I can see the benefits, from having read about them and attended an online event, of using KOs in the primary languages classroom to facilitate the learning and to help children to become more independent learners.  I can appreciate how it would help children to have the information to hand from the beginning of a unit, particularly in the new and changed circumstances in which we will all find ourselves come September.

As far as format is concerned, the format that is favoured in secondary classrooms is the parallel text.  I tried an example of the parallel text approach a year ago:

This is from my Yo soy músico unit, which is the one I keep in my back pocket to teach if I run out of scheme of work with any year group.  It introduces opinions of genres of music, musical instruments and regular -AR verbs.  This parallel text illustrates the infinitive and the 6 forms of the -AR verb tocar.  

I tried it out first with two very good Year 6 classes, who bought into it wholesale and got a lot from it.  I tried it the following week with a Year 4 class.  Many of them found it OK, but the weaker readers found the approach very hard to deal with, and opted out.  

I think it's most suited to upper Key Stage 2, and I would have to think carefully before using this approach in lower Key Stage 2.  We need to think carefully about the English literacy level of the children in the classroom.  Children in Years 3 and 4 often enjoy languages because of the focus on speaking and listening and the fact that there is considerably less reading and writing than elsewhere in the curriculum, so it would be a shame to opt for a reading-heavy approach which would lead to less enjoyment for them.  I'm also not convinced that younger children would be able to delve through a text of this nature to find the part they need when it comes to adapting and substituting text.

Yesterday I worked through the first week of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) Teaching Languages in Primary Schools: Putting Research into Practice on FutureLearn.  It focused on three pedagogical principles for middle childhood, which more or less corresponds to Key Stage 2.  This was one of my main takeaways: "Fun activities from an engaging teacher are particularly important at this stage" (i.e. Year 3 and maybe Year 4), as children of this age are more emotionally engaged in this kind of learning at this stage.  This ties in with what I said above, that children need a more teacher-led and less reading-heavy approach in lower Key Stage 2.  However later on, as the children get older, they appreciate more opportunities to reflect on the language and to see that they are progressing.  This would favour the parallel text approach more.

At the top of this page you can see the format of KO that I have chosen to accompany my new scheme of work for Key Stage 2 Spanish.  It comprises the vocabulary that the children will need for that unit, as well as examples of the phrases and sentences that we will be working on.  I have also displayed the key verbs that that particular unit includes and the key sounds, which are also underlined throughout the KO.  That's not to say that these KOs won't undergo a few tweaks here and there when I eventually get to use them!

It's worth pointing out here that a sentence builder (such as the one below, tabular as well as flowchart) can also be a KO - it contains all the key vocabulary and the structure.

I'm still very much on my journey of discovery as far as KOs are concerned, and of course I haven't had the opportunity to use them in the classroom yet.  I would be very interested, as always, to hear any of your constructive comments!

Useful reading:

• Knowledge Organisers: What they are and how to use them in KS1 and KS2
• What are Knowledge Organisers and how can we use them in the primary classroom?
• A Knowledge Organiser about Knowledge Organisers
• Knowledge Organisers - from Steve Smith's blog
• Everything in the MFL Knowledge Organisers group on Facebook