Engaging Students with Concept Mapping Activities

Questions:

1. The use of concept mapping can be very helpful for engaging your students in their learning. A few specific examples would be to use concept mapping for showing how Frida Kahlo's life was connected to so many other peoples' lives (as well as the interconnections between those people), teaching a cultural lesson about Cinco de Mayo and the repercussions of the battle that happened on that day, and maybe as an assignment for students to map out the process of the manner in which children in Latin America go from being in school to workers helping to support their family. The third example might sound a little too simplistic, but it's a lot more complicated than a person might at first assume.
   
2. My students would be able to demonstrate that they understand a concept or topic that I'd be teaching by using concept mapping fairly easily. The maps would not be just about lines and bubbles with words in them; they'd have explanations/reasons on the lines going from one concept bubble to the next. It would force them to think a lot more about the relationships between the details of whatever concept you're helping them to master, and to critically think about the topic and the consequences of the beginning action, or the end result of something that happens (depending on what it is that they're mapping). Chances are that it will also draw on previous knowledge, which will help your class be a place of constructive learning for your students.
   

Annie Kroll

October 2, 2007

T&L 466 section 2

Concept mapping summary

Concept mapping is a much more clean way to come up with ideas that the traditional pencil and notebook paper. They’re sort of like an advance organizer on the computer, and are easily adjusted if ideas change or information needs to be added to already existing information. Concept mapping, from what I observe, gets rid of the need for continual scratching out, the worry about running out of room for all the ideas, and eliminates the frustration of trying to read barely legible handwriting later on.

A lot of the sites that I tried to access were not working or gave me an error message. However, there were a few that worked very well, and in my future classroom, I think it would be fun to copy a few of the ideas that I have seen from reviewing these pages. For example, the Mind Maps page pointed out that this would be a great way for students or teachers to present information and how things are connected. In my classroom specifically, this would be a great way to map out the way that the governments of the United States and Mexico interact and how they’re connected to each other. Other fabulous ways to use concept mapping would be for study guides, coming up with ideas of what to write about in a mock letter to the president (which I actually did do during my practicum), and to help students to recognize and remember key ideas in a reading or a video that we go over in class (or even that they review for an assignment). The websites that I visited were mostly not available, so The versatility of concept mapping makes it easily adaptable to a large number of situations in or out of the classroom, and it’s a nice way to make over a tried and true tool for students to use!

Works Cited

“Mind Maps: A Powerful Approach to Note Taking.” MindTools. 2007. Buzan Organization. 2 October.

2007. < http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_01.htm>.

“Graphic Organizers”. T/TAC. Spring 1997. The College of Whitman and Mary. 2 October.

2007. < http://www.wm.edu/ttac/articles/learning/graphic.html >.