The Frayer Model is a categorization strategy that provides students with a visual diagram to help them understand new concepts by defining them, listing their key characteristics, and providing examples and non-examples. Using this model, students analyze essential and nonessential attributes of a word to refine their understanding of what a concept is and is not through considering examples and non-examples from texts and their own experiences. Teachers assign a new concept and guide students through reading about it and completing the Frayer Model diagram to elaborate on their comprehension of the term.

1. Frayer Model
The Frayer Model is a categorization strategy that helps students understand new
concepts. In the first example (below), students provide a definition, list of characteristics,
and provide examples and non-examples of the concept. In the second example (below),
students analyze a word’s essential and nonessential characteristics and refine their
understanding by choosing examples and non-examples of the concept.
There are many concepts or key vocabulary terms in the content areas that can be
confusing. This strategy provides students with the opportunity to understand what a
concept is and what it is not. It gives students an opportunity to explain their
understanding and to elaborate by providing examples and non-examples from their own
lives.
Procedure:
• Assign a concept or key vocabulary term that might be confusing or new to students.
• Explain the Frayer model diagram below.
• Have the students read text material.
• Identify evidence of examples and non-examples from the text.
Definition (in own words)
Characteristics
Examples
Non-examples
Adapted from: Teaching Reading in Science, Mary Lee Barton and Deborah L. Jordan, McREL (Mid-continent
Research for Education and Learning, 2001, p. 53