Hello,
I am getting ready to post my 2nd episode on my podcast. It is my first official episode with a "tool" for your teacher "toolbox". I plan to try to keep the blog going as well as the podcast, but in particular I want to have the content of the podcast in the blog, so that anyone can access the pictures and any resources I include. https://anchor.fm/marav/episodes/Mind-Mapping-e1fnajf
This week's strategy is something I use frequently in my classroom, concept mapping! I have posted about how I use this strategy in previous blogs. My post: "End of Semester Reflection" from May of 2014, has pictures and several ways I have incorporated concept maps.
Today I wanted to walk through a very specific method and discuss some other ways that concept mapping could be used in a classroom. One thing I have found is that concept mapping can often sound overwhelming to both teachers and students. As a teacher it is easy to think, "How do I get my students to make the connections they are supposed to make?" Students are sometimes intimidated by the structure. Once they understand and have seen it modeled they usually jump in with enthusiasm. Some students do not like the messiness of the map. There are ways this can be avoided that I will discuss.
I typically see the benefits of concept mapping in terms of students understanding content immediately in my classroom. I recently had my student teacher do a concept map activity, this was actually the inspiration for this post and episode. I have been working with him on taking activities, like a read and answer questions worksheet, and making them interactive and provide students with an opportunity for high order thinking. After completing the concept map activity I asked my student teacher to look at the original questions he wanted students to answer and see if he thought that based on the concept maps the questions were answered and the students learned the objective. His answer was yes! And in the process students collaborated and discussed. I call this a success!
Of course I have had times when a concept map activity has flopped! But with the guidance I provide and if you follow the guidelines for how and when to use it, I believe you will have solid strategy to pull from your toolbox when needed!
First I would like to walk you through how I just recently utilized concept maps in my classroom and show you some pictures of the outcome. Then I will give you some steps for choosing when and how to implement. And finally I'll leave you with some questions to think about and "homework" to come up with an idea for how this could be implemented in your own classroom in your content area.
My example was done in Earth Science as part of the Geologic History Unit. The students are learning about the Paleozoic Era. They have some background already, but one piece that we had not yet covered was the large insects! To cover this topic I wanted the students to read an article and make a connection between the high oxygen levels in the atmosphere the large insects that lived during the Paleozoic Era. I found an article that covered the topic I needed.
Then words were pulled out that I thought were interesting and relevant. I found 24 words and then placed them in groups of four so that each word group had at least 3 of the following: something related to the Era, something related to oxygen, an example of a large insect, and something that showed size. Here are two example word groups:
Group 1:
Permian Period
Largest
31-35%Oxygen
Griffenfly
Group 2:Carboniferous Period
Atmospheric Oxygen
Ancient Sea Scorpion
Insects
The six word groups were distributed as evenly as possible. Before even seeing the article, the students had to write a sentence prediction about what the article might be about or what they think might be connections between their four words. Students then were given the article, and told to read and highlight anytime they encountered their word in the article. On a half sheet of paper students then placed their four words and drew lines to connect them. They had to try to write a reason for the connection on the connecting lines.
The last piece of the activity (this is where the actual concept map comes into play), was to have students group up with the different word groups. When I passed out the word groups I had them labeled as colors to make this easier. (I keep saying I, but really my student teacher was the one actually doing the lesson! I came up with the idea and helped facilitate, but he was the one to implement it). Big post it notes (the ones that stick to the wall and are chart paper size), were set out and we placed students from at least 3 different word groups at each post it. The students were told the goal was to make as many connections between all the words that they could! Some groups chose to each put their original concept map on the big post it and then connect each web. And then some groups chose to just put all the words on the paper and start connecting based on what they had done individually. The key was that they had to make sure the lines showed how the words were connected.
At the very end as teams, students had to come up with a summary of the article based on their connections. Here are some results!
The major goal was to show students some of the life during the Paleozoic and to recognize that the large insects thrived because of the high levels of oxygen. Mission accomplished!
Tips and Tricks to Utilizing Concept Maps:
I have found that you have to be intentional about when concept maps are used and how they are introduced to the students. I have found that they are most successful in my classroom when used with articles like the example I gave, or as a review of key unit concepts. If the connections are vague and difficult to make, it might not be a great topic to start off with. You have to teach the concept map part. When I started doing them, I thought everyone knew what a concept map, concept web, or word web was supposed to look like. This is not the case. You also have to teach connection words and give very clear examples. With my example scenario, I started by using the word Paleozoic Era and Permian Period. I told students to record each word and draw a line between them going from Permian to Paleozoic. On the line it should say " a period during the". This example was a very obvious connection but it helped to get students in the right mindset to make other deeper connections.
In summary for tips and suggestions:
- Be very intentional with the words
- Be very intentional with teaching how to make a concept map and how to make connections
- Model maps and your thought process if you were to do the activity yourself
- Don't jump the gun and try to get big connections and elaborate maps if students are not familiar with how to make a map or if they don't have the content knowledge yet.
- Don't give the students too many words to think about. In my example I used 24 but divided them up so each student only had 4. If you are just having students or groups jump in and make a map without a prior activity, I would say 10 or less words would work well.
- To avoid the problem if a student is uncomfortable with "mess", you could show them examples of concept maps that are more outline form. Do not force students to make a web or follow a specific format for making connections. I have even had times when students just write sentences with the words that are being connected underlined.
Your turn: There are so many variations to concept mapping and they all are amazing ways to help students make connections and think critically about a topic. There are two other ways that I briefly wanted to share:
The first is the idea of using the concept map strategy as a way for students to make a review sheet of a unit. In my science professional learning community we have discussed the idea of the concept map being the final piece for students to put everything from a unit together. A step by step way to do this would be to start with
Cornell Notes as a guide for the unit. To start in a general education course such as general biology, you might want to scaffold this. In traditional Cornell notes when reading or listening to a lecture the students come up with Main Ideas or "Cues" on one side and then Notes on the other side. At the end they write a short summary. There are lots of modifications to this, but one idea is to have students write questions for the cues and then answers for the notes. To scaffold this the teacher can come up with the questions. The point of this is not to teach you about Cornell Notes (although this is a valuable strategy I might spend some time on in a future post). However, the point is that you could take these questions and use them as study questions...think flashcards. Then at the end of the unit you could put together several Cornell notes and have students use the study questions and answers to make their concept maps. This would take a lot of teaching and modeling, but has the potential for students to make amazing connections! You could also not do the whole Cornell Notes activities but just figure out another way to help students focus in on what should go on the unit review.
The second way I wanted to share was something called Hexagonal Thinking charts. This could be online/digital or paper pencil. This idea has students taking words and making connections to other words on all six sides of the hexagon. If you are interested in this method of concept mapping, I got the idea from Blogger Betsy Potash. On her
blog she provides details about this strategy and even gives out resources to help. And you can also listen to an interview with her from
cultofpedagogy . I used this strategy to have students make connections between the four spheres on earth and the cycles of matter.
Lots to process and think about! I'd like to leave you with the task of thinking about how you might use concept mapping in your science class or whatever content you teach. Maybe you already do some concept mapping. How could you improve it or add to it?
Critical thinking and engaging in class is so important and I have found concept mapping to be a method that gets engagement from a high percentage of a class. It also forces the students to think but they don't feel so much pressure about being right or wrong with their answers.
I hope this is a strategy that you try, like, and add to your toolbox! I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions!
-Mara
