Engaging Students with Concept Mapping

Concept Mapping is a useful technique for visualizing the relationships between different topics. A concept map can be a diagram or picture to help show the relationship between concepts. Concept maps use labels, arrows, words, and boxes to help the viewer visualize the idea. Concept mapping can be used in many different ways.

Students can use concept mapping in every subject in school. There are many possibilities to concept mapping. One of the most common uses for concept mapping is to display or organize ideas about a paper or book. Students can organize their essay or paper before they start writing by creating a concept map. They can lay out their ideas and organize their paper by paragraphs. Students who use concept maps to summarize a book they have read can look at different parts of the book and create many different concept maps. They can make a concept map from the whole book or just from one character in the book.

Concept mapping does not only have to be about reading and writing. Students can also use concept mapping in science and math. They can make a concept map about almost any topic in science or math. Students can categorize mammals, amphibians, and reptiles. In math students can make groups of similar object or estimate using concept mapping.

Concept mapping can change the way students demonstrate a concept or idea in many ways. Using concept maps students can display main topics in the middle, subtopics, and then branch out to a smaller category. This way they can demonstrate that they know how the main topic relates to all the other subtopics and sub-subtopics. They can also see the connections through the pictures used. If a teacher used pictures in her concept map the students can visually follow the map. This might also help them understand the concept as well.