Engaging Students With Concept Mapping

Here is an example of a concept map.

1) One of the ways that teachers could use Concept Mapping in the classroom would be to assist students in organizing their thoughts before starting an essay on their summer vacation. A concept map would allow students to organize their activities before they begin writing their essay so the ideas are chronological. This would help students because they could visually see their ideas down on paper and it would make the actual writing of the essay much easier. A concept map would also be useful during the WASL. There are essay portions on the WASL where students need to organize their thoughts before beginning a section. A concept map is something that I used during the WASL and I think that it would really help students.

I would teach students to organize their thoughts in a concept map for the WASL because it would end up saving them time during the writing process. Since the WASL is timed, this would help them greatly to organize their thoughts and make them more fluent. Another idea that I explored on how to integrate concept mapping into a classroom would be to have students create a concept map of their families. I think this would be a great way to start off the school year because it would give the teacher insight into the students’ lives. For example, one stem off the map could be grandparents on mom’s side of the family. This would be an easy way for students to create a family tree without getting as confusing as some family trees can be. Then after creating the concept map, they could write a story about all the members of their family or their favorite memory with their family.

2) I think that concept mapping would have a positive impact on student learning because it gives the students a chance to organize their ideas and make them flow. This would increase student learning because they would be more successful writers and their stories would make sense. Another way that concept mapping could impact student learning in a positive manner would be through initial assessment. A teacher could use concept mapping to gauge where his/her students are before beginning a lesson. This way, the students would not be expected to learn information that was beyond their capabilities or information they have already learned. I think that this would increase student learning because you would be able to start students in a correct zone of proximal development where they can still be challenged but not so much as to frustrate them.

3) Some criteria that I would use to determine whether or not to use concept mapping would be whether or not it would benefit the students to do a concept map. For example, I would not expect students to concept map show and tell; however I would expect them to concept map a book we read in class. By doing this, it would help the students to retain the information better on subjects that I would determine to be more important (not that show and tell isn’t important). Some other criteria that I would have when determining if concept mapping is appropriate or not would be whether or not the concept map would be used again for their benefit. I would not want to the students to do a concept map at the end of a lesson after a test. This would not be beneficial to the student because it wouldn’t affect the future of their learning and I wouldn’t want the students to create something that neither of us would be using again.