1. Identify 3-5 innovative ways you could use concept mapping activities within your classroom and describe how these 3-5 ideas would be integrated within your teaching.
Concept mapping activities' usage in classrooms:
1. Enables students to show relationships among concepts.
2. Students are provided a visual representation of how the concepts relate; and the action
of drafting a concept map helps to reiterate the learning.
3. Can be used to help students generate goals and map out potential results of goals.
4. Helps students exercise their thinking skills as they think about how things relate to one
another.
5. Students can formulate concept maps across subjects.
As briefly outlined above, one can see what a helpful tool concept maps can be in fostering thinking and learning in students. With its benefits in mind, it is motivating to adopt its use within my classroom.
I have seen where concept maps have been used for students to "introduce" themselves by mapping out what is important to them such as their hobbies, values, goals, and other aspects that make them who they are. This can be a great beginning activity to introduce concept mapping to students since writing about yourself is a topic that a person should be pretty knowledgeable about.
Using concept maps to provide a visual organizer can be useful in the elementary grades where students can include pictures to coincide with their concept map. This can be beneficial when students learn about the different seasons, weather patterns, etc. By presenting these topics initially through a concept map, I (as a teacher) can use it as a primary outline to show the students what they will be learning and how each topic ties in to "a bigger picture."
Concept maps can also appeal to the more artistically-inclined students. The idea of including pictures to supplement a concept map can provide a great means for students to exercise their creativity in their designs. Also, the more analytical students can include many "branches" to showcase their intricate learning of the relationships between the concepts being analyzed.
Concept maps can be applied throughout topics. I can see its application in science (showing relationships among ecosystems maybe), in writing (mapping out writing ideas and potential avenues to strengthen writing), and in math (providing students with a visual for learning multiplication and the methods behind it- 4 x 4 means adding four groups of four together). Concept maps can be integrated into my teaching through the above mentioned methods.
2. Discuss how your use of these concept mapping activities would impact student learning within your classroom?
I see its benefit in providing students with another method to organize their thoughts and increase their learning potential. Having students map out concepts can provide a road map to organize their thoughts. Also, the process of creating this road map of conceptual relationships helps develop students' thinking skills and the act of writing/drawing out the concept map enables the teaching to be reiterated through a different medium.
3. Discuss how you would go about learning this type of concept mapping software to the point where you would feel comfortable integrating it in your classroom. Do you think it would be worth your time?
First, I would thoroughly explore the concept mapping software website (http://www.kidspiration.com/productinfo/inspiration/index.cfm). Downloading the free trial would also be beneficial. I would feel more comfortable integrating its use in the classroom as I learned more about the product and looked at how other educators have incorporated it into their curriculum. However, I do not feel that I would need to know EVERYTHING about the software before I introduced it to my students; I would be fine being a "co-learner" with my students. I would just need to know enough so that I could facilitate its use.
Any means to help students learn better is worth my time, so yes, I feel that me taking the time to familiarize myself with the software is worth my time, too.
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