Teachers Values
Frayer (1969) has identified a strategy for teaching lesson vocabulary that increases student comprehension, called the Frayer Model. This instructional strategy promotes critical thinking and helps students identify and understand unfamiliar vocabulary. This technique can be used with the entire class, small groups, or individual work and draws on a student's prior knowledge to build connections among new concepts. It also creates a visual reference for students to compare attributes and examples.
Frayer uses a four-square graphic organizer for students to write out the definition, examples, and characteristics or an illustration.
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Strengths of the Frayer Model:
- Engages Multiple Learning Styles: By incorporating visuals, definitions, examples, and non-examples, the Frayer Model caters to different learning styles (kinesthetic, visual, auditory).
- Promotes Active Learning: Students actively engage with the vocabulary term by analyzing, defining, and providing examples.
- Improves Retention: The visual format and connections drawn between the term and its characteristics enhance information recall.
- Encourages Critical Thinking: Students analyze the meaning, identify relevant examples, and differentiate from non-examples, fostering critical thinking skills.
- Builds Prior Knowledge: The Frayer Model leverages existing knowledge to build connections with new vocabulary terms.
- Variations: The traditional four-square format can be adapted. Some variations include using essential vs. non-essential characteristics, focusing solely on examples and non-examples, or incorporating a sentence using the term.
- Technology Integration: Digital versions of the Frayer Model can be created using online graphic organizers or mind-mapping tools.
- Differentiation: The Frayer Model can be adapted for different learning levels. For younger students, visuals and simple examples might be the focus, while older students can delve deeper into characteristics and more complex examples.