What is a ‘Knowledge Organiser’?

A Knowledge Organiser is a go-to document for a Unit of work: each one identifies the key information that children will have learnt about by the end of a topic or theme. It also acts as a tool to support children in retaining and retrieving knowledge for life-long learning.

How do they help teachers?

They are used as a planning tool - to plan the essential knowledge that children need to cover in the Unit

• • Key dates
• • key people
• • key events
• • Key vocabulary and definitions, and key concepts - in ‘child-friendly’ language

How do they help children?

They provide the essential knowledge that children need to cover in the Unit shared at the beginning so children know what they are going to be learning.
Knowledge Organisers help them to remember key dates, key people, key events, vocabulary and definitions and key concepts.
They can be used as a fun assessment tool to help remember the Units.
They improve their ability to remember.
Knowledge Organisers help them to develop other skills - e.g. when writing a nonfiction report, if they already have the knowledge they can focus on the writing skills.

How do they help parents?

Parents will have a better understanding of what the children need to know. They will allow parents to build on their knowledge at home and provide an easy tool for parents to quiz children at home (and children to quiz parents!)

We have developed our own Knowledge Organisers to support the delivery of the curriculum which contain a list of technical vocabulary with definitions. Each organiser used in school, also has an accompanying quiz, which is regularly taken by the children in school to help children recall the key knowledge from each Unit of work. These knowledge organisers are designed carefully to match identified ‘key knowledge and vocabulary’ we want each class to understand in each Unit of work. 

Once each Knowledge Organiser has been completed, we will gradually place them on this page for your information.

Below you will find some of the knowledge organisers that are being used in Year 5 to support the learning.