How does organization affect teaching? And I don't mean tidy desks alphabetized, nor stubbornly outlined notes. I'm talking about preparation, knowledge of tools at hand and understanding of the best time to use each. As I read the second edition of Classroom Instruction that Works (CIW), chapter four, I gathered several key examples of organization's effect using tools such as cues, questions, and advanced organizers.
    According to CIW, cues are "hints about content of an upcoming lesson; they reinforce prior information while providing knew information on the topic." Now let's consider how this affects teaching. Students are often drowning in a sea of information while teachers eagerly point out every fish of knowledge swimming within. But teaching requires focus, requires catching the big fish and letting the little ones alone. Cues help students fish for those big ideas, the important concepts they need to master before exploring deeper knowledge. Cues allow the teacher to gear up students in order that they recognize which facts and concepts are important and which are present curiosities  They also allow teachers to build off of students prior knowledge to create a more complete understanding and mastery of a topic or concept.
    What about questions? How do they affect teaching? We already know that they exist on tests and can--in useless situations--be rhetorical. But when teachers question their students to provoke deeper thought, reflection, and assessment of knowledge, questions become a key factor in unlocking understanding. I touched on this in a previous post concerning understanding. (See September 18, 2013) Questions must be broad, require critical thinking, and allow for multiple personal answers. If a teachers asks a question with one specific answer, students will merely spit out data without gaining any personal insight to the answers importance. "'When did Columbus sail the ocean blue?'--'In 1492!'" So what? Why is this date so important? What is significant about four specific numbers? Instead, consider this question: "How did Columbus' discovery of America in 1492 impact the European world?" Much broader! This question opens the floor to student discussion allowing them to discuss multiple impacts of New World and Old World interactions, competition in the East for new materials, culture shock. These concepts can then, with further questioning, be applied to students personal lives, equiping them with skills to interact with a diverse world growing "smaller" every day.
    Advanced Organizers allow teachers to grab students interest. Although they can be effectively used any time during a lesson or unit, CIW notes that they work best to hook students at the introduction of new material. The four types of commonly used organizers are Expository (written/verbal explanations of new and important content); Narrative (new information presented in a story format); Skimming (quick glances over new information to gain a general impression); and Graphic Advanced Organizer (graphic organizers provided in advance to subject introduction using pictures and phrases to organize prior information). Each of these provide a road map to students concerning what is about to be taught and what is to be learned. Organizers may take the form as verbal stories, small videos, diagrams, work sheets, group activities. Even, as mentioned in Skimming, glancing over the titles of Chapters and sections to identify key points and predict important concepts allows teachers to provide an organized outline of information to students. By doing this students get a general idea of what will be taught as well as hone their reading skills to recognize important information.
    But, these need not always be used in introduction. In Jane Fung's article "Four Ways to Think Like a Scientist with Science Notebooks" (I have provided a link to this article at the end of this post) organizers can be used to allow student reflection of new material. In her article, Fung described the flexibility the journals provided in her elementary science class. Students were encouraged, prompted, and/or left to their own imagination to record and analyze what they had learned in science notebooks. As the year progressed and students acquired better honed information-gathering skills, the journal entries become more complex. Fung was then able to use these journals to assess the students' understanding. The students were also able to reflect on what they had learned and self-assess their learning skills.
    The journals are not the only Organizers teachers can use to assess student understanding. Having students create their own study guides (questions) or write creative diary entries using information learned in the entry both allow students to take the knowledge provided and personalize the information.

https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2013/09/25/think-like-a-scientist/