Concept Mapping Summary

Concept Mapping

Although concept mapping is not a new idea to me, using software to create a concept map is. I was introduced to graphic organizers in middle school as a way to pre-write and brainstorm ideas before writing short stories. I have also learned about them in some of my college classrooms. In earlier T&L classes these were used pretty frequently, though as the focus moved to secondary education, I have not seen them lately. Recently, in one of my creative writing English classes, my instructor encouraged the use of concept maps along with other pre-writing activities. Those of us who were used to organizing our ideas in a linear or linguistic way were surprised by the new ideas we generated when our brains were put to use in a different way. I really like the idea of concept mapping as “thinking outside of the box.”

I would really like to use concept maps in my classroom and I feel there is a lot of room for them in English/Language Arts. Like the class I mentioned above, I would introduce concept maps as a way to organize ideas for creative writing as well as formal writing. I would help them utilize these tools alongside outlines, sketches, timelines, webs and rough drafts to help them open their minds and get their thoughts out on paper to create successful pieces of written work. I would also show students how to put information we’ve read into concept maps. If a certain book or story we’ve read in class is difficult to grasp or confusing for the students, this would be a good way to help them deeper understand theme, content, historical context, etc., of the piece. It would help them organize the information they are being given from the text in a way that simply reading it for understanding cannot. Lastly, one of the ideas on the Inspiration website for integrating concept maps into English curriculum was vocab. In the example, vocabulary words were expanded with synonyms, antonyms and the use of the word in a sentence. This way of practicing vocabulary in the classroom seems more interesting and creative than the way it is done traditionally by just giving students the definitions of words, expecting them to memorize them and then administering a quiz or test. It’s much more practical to assume that students would learn better when given various ways of looking at a word and remembering it. Teachers could even give the students blank maps for every word and have the students research the words fill the charts out by themselves.

We are told in all of our T&L classes that there are many different types of learners, including those who prefer to learn visually and may internalize information better when it is organized in a way that allows them to see it rather than to read or hear it. Using concept maps is yet another way to try and reach all students no matter how varied their learning styles. Like I mentioned above, letting students use concept maps to actaully see their ideas on paper and be able to organize them is a great way to engage them in their own learning. If you lecture to students and tell them what you want them to know, it gets transferred to their notes without any internalization. However, if you show them the necessary information and ask them to create the concept maps with the information, they will be more interested and have a better chance of hanging on to the content.

Relatedly, asking students to create concept maps expresses to the teacher that the understand more than just how to regurgitate the textbook information to achieve the grade. Asking students to organize content and use the concept map to detail/discuss the relationships and connections between each topic requires a higher level of critical thinking, while asking students to answer the questions at the end of the chapter only requires them to flip back through the pages to copy the information they need. You can observe how well your students understand a concept by asking them to create a map, but not by asking them to answer questions that only require them to recite what the text or the teacher says.