The Versatility of the Y Chart

The Y Chart

Teachers have been using the Y Chart as an effective tool in the classroom for many years. Essentially it serves as an analytical tool, since students and teachers strive to discover more and more about a topic using a sensate approach (that is - what does this topic Look, Sound and Feel like (and even taste, smell and move like)?

It is usually completed as a pre-product stage or a brainstorm exercise, from which one can start creating a product such as a written report, bubble maps, Powerpoint presentations, interviews and more.

Some basic considerations to encourage students to get more out of the Y Chart are as follows. The examples are drawn from the topic “Disaster at Sea”.

Looks Like:

Encourage students to start with the concrete, the obvious; what may be easy to see or imagine as a visual. Then encourage them to look for ideas and more abstract images. Ask them to imagine what it looks like before, during and after the event being examined.

Examples are, ‘people scrambling desperately’, ‘listing ship’, ‘lightning, ‘burning oil on water’, ‘lifeboats bobbing in the rough sea’, ‘desperate stares’, ‘chaos’, ‘fear’, ‘flotsam’.

Sounds Like:

Too often students are limited to recording actual sounds related to an event, such as thunder and lightning sounds in a storm.

To get more out of your students, ask them to record what was actually said or what they could imagine people saying. Ask them to imagine what people would say to themselves, i.e. the internal dialogue. Use as many speech marks as possible.

Examples could be cries for help, “who will save us?”, “we are in trouble”, “hurry, swim to the life boat”, flames crackling, gurgling boilers, hissing steam.

Feels Like:

This is clearly the zone for tactile and kinesthetic imagination and expression. Here students need to be ‘in the zone’, so to speak, allowing them to be empathetic, as if they were there. Ask them to record how people would also feel emotionally.

Examples could be: desperation, fear, oily water, freezing cold water, pounding heart, hopelessness etc

However, the Y-Chart is far more than a simple analytical tool!

The remainder of this article will explore how to add value to the Y Chart, making it far more versatile and useful in the daily classroom. It will also introduce greater breadth and depth and explain how it can be used for Analysis, Evaluation and Design-type activities.

The Y Chart as an Analysis Tool

One value-adding idea is to examine the Y Chart further once it is completed.

Ask students to use a Think: Pair: Share (Think on your own for a set time, let’s say for 1 minute, then Pair up with the person next to you in order to swap notes and see if you can generate more ideas or insights, then each pair Shares this with the teacher) in order to detect categories of responses.

For example, if this was a Y Chart dealing with an examination of the recent school camp, students are likely to detect categories such as ‘team work’, ‘physical activities’, ‘self-esteem’, ‘environmental issues’, ’organizational matters’ ‘transport’ etc. Once these categories have been established, students can then be asked to classify the numerous entries on the Y Chart under each of the categories. This allows students to reorganize their myriad entries into a manageable structure. Once each of the categories is finalized and entries assigned, students are in a much better position to write their reports.

This now offers an opportunity for more in-depth analysis before starting on the final product.

Another way to add value to the Y Chart is to ask students to examine each category in turn by using a Pros and Cons T Chart for each entry in that category. Let’s say that the Pros and Cons examination reveals that most of the events were seen as very positive (Pros) with few negatives (Cons): the student would now be in a position to offer a more in-depth paragraph or chapter on that category. This can then be repeated for each category in turn, allowing students to develop a far more substantive report or product.

For Example:

School Camp
Physical Activities	Pros	Cons
Ropes Course	Great coaches, fun, every day, greater challenges, safe	Sometimes windy
Canoeing	Plenty of canoes, good training, learnt new skills, good competition, exciting water	Sometimes a bit cold
Cross Country Runs	Realistic, great scenery, different tracks,	Some direction guides missing
Orienteering	Great fun, learnt new skills, team work	Not enough compasses at times

The Y Chart as an Assessment Tool

The Y Chart can also be used as an Assessment or Evaluation tool as per Bloom’s taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain. The students can look at each entry in the Pros and Cons T Chart and then employ the Extent Barometer.

If all or most of the entries in Physical Activity are positive, it is likely that the result would be Very High. This can be marked as a horizontal line on that Extent Barometer. This exercise can be repeated for each category. If all or most of the categories reflect a High rating, then it is clear that the student can conclude that this was indeed a very successful school camp.

The Y Chart as a Design Tool

To further display the versatility of the Y Chart, it can also be used as a Design tool in that the student could ask, “What could a wonderful school camp Look Like, Sound Like and Feel Like?”. In this case, we would use the Y Chart to plan an even better camp next time. Here we would be looking at the Cons and deciding how we could remove or minimize the Cons in this year’s school camp to ensure greater success in the future.

The Split Y Chart

To add even more value to the Y Chart, we have developed the Split Y Chart which gives greater substance to any Analysis, Evaluation or Design.

In the example below, taken from the 2009 edition of the Innovative Teachers’ Companion, the split used is Possible Succes s and Possible Failure when thinking more deeply about a Personal Health Plan.

Here, it is clear that the students have decided which ideas deal with Possible Failure (the – sign) and Possible Success (the + sign). The result is a far more balanced analysis

From this point, students can use the ideas, illustrated in the earlier part of the article, to discern categories and classify this information, then employ the Pros and Cons T Chart and then the Extent Barometer to determine their possible chances of succeeding in the quest for a personal health plan.

Other splits could be safe-unsafe, healthy-unhealthy, sustainable-unsustainable, fair-unfair, ethical-unethical, legal-illegal, practical-impractical and so on.

Conclusion

If you haven’t used the Y Chart for a while, it may be time to pick it up again, dust it off and try some of the ideas above. What is certain, however; is that the Y-Chart is student-centered and simple, leading to better student outcomes, a greater sense of ownership and increased motivation.