Engaging Students with Concept Mapping Activities

Post a 3-5 paragraph summary of the 3-5 ideas you explored for how you could use Concept Mapping within your future classroom. Give your specific examples.
Concept Mapping is a great idea for a classroom. I fell in love with this idea after first using it. You can do a variety of different things with Concept Mapping in a classroom. One idea would be in reading and writing. Kids can strengthen their word recognition, vocabulary and comprehension. Children can also develop critical thinking skills for stories using this Concept Mapping idea. A child can have a book and learn about the different parts of the book, the main characters, the setting, and what happens in the story. Here is an example I made:

Another idea would be for math. This would be good for children to learn math by using visual math tools to build problem solving and reasoning skills. Students can build number sense, spatial reasoning, and the understanding of the four basic operations. Here is an example I made:

Another idea would be for science. Students could explore the relationships between animals, bugs, birds, etc. They can also learn about the classification of certain things. Here is an example I made:

Another idea would be for social studies. This concept mapping idea can help kids understand history, geography, civics, and economics. They can make connections between historical events and learn differences between cultures. Here is an example I made:

Discuss what you see as the impact of the use of Concept mapping within your classroom might have on student learning? Give some details to support your statements. Students learn a variety of things from concept mapping. They learn how to compare and contrast, group certain ideas, they can learn about books from making maps, etc.

1. Discuss some criteria that you would use to decide whether or not Concept Mapping activities would be part of a lesson for your students.The biggest thing would be whether the kids would learn from concept mapping or not. If the kids just get confused from the mapping concept then it would not be useful to have in the classroom for that certain activity. Math could be a hard subject to use concept mapping with if you are teaching harder activities. It would be a good idea if a child is a visual learner! This is a great idea for children who learn better by pictures rather than words.