Engaging Students With Concept Mapping Activities

Post a 2-3 paragraph summary of the 3-5 ideas you explored for how you could use Concept Mapping within your future classroom. Give your specific examples.

With this activity, I was able to explore lots of different ways that I can use Concept Mapping within my future classroom. This method is defined by dictionary.com as "a tangible way to display how your mind sees a particular topic."
The most obvious of these realizations was that Concept Mapping can come in handy when my students are trying to organize their own ideas. Regardless of the subject, concept mapping is a great way for students to organize their thought processes because it provides an opportunity to look at information in a different way. A child can easily map out the main ideas for a story that they are writing or the outline of a story that someone else has written. In these ways, a concept map can be highly useful.


Discuss what you see as the impact of the use of Concept mapping might have on student learning within your future classroom? Give some details to support your statements.

Within my future classroom, I can see that Concept Mapping would have a major impact on my student learning for several reasons. I believe that when students are first beginning how to communicate and write their own stories, that it is important for them to be able to see a visual break-down of what they want to happen in the story. For this reason, it is important to have some form of concept map, where they can write down the events that they want to happen in the beginning, middle, and end of a story. This helps the students organize their thoughts into a way that is easy for them, their classmates, and I to follow. Another way that this can become useful is when students then advance into organizing and putting their information into paragraph form, which they would also find easier to do if they are given the opportunity to map out their thoughts. In the classroom that I have my practicum with, they are beginning to learn about paragraphs and write them in a way that begins with an introduction, middle, and ending statement. To help with this, my teacher gives them each a sheet of paper that is divided into thirds and has them write out ideas for what they want to say in each part. In these ways, I have seen very beneficial ways for concept mapping to help improve student learning, which I will continue in my future classroom.


Discuss at least 2 criteria that you would use to decide whether or not Concept Mapping activities would be part of a lesson for your students.

Two criteria that I would use when deciding whether or not Concept Mapping activities would or should be a part of my lesson would be:
a) Sit down and read through my lesson. Decide what my main target for the assignment is. If concept mapping isn't a direct variable in the students' advancement toward this target, it's probably not important enough to spend the time on.
b) Think about my allowed time. If I don't have the time to fit in a huge concept mapping section of the lesson, I may need to alter my plan and maybe do a shared learning experience where my whole class makes an example concept map.

Reflections On Using TeacherWeb

1. Describe at least 2 ways that the use of a class web site like TeacherWeb could be used to support your future teaching. Provide some specific details for each example.

Two ways that the use of a class website on TeacherWeb can be used to support my future teaching are that it would be helpful for students to be able to submit their entries and check the grades on them , as well as be able to stay up to date with all the different events going on within our classroom. Examples of this can be seen on my site, where I have different pages dedicated to calendars, assignments, and grades.

2. Identify 2 ways students could use a class web site like TeacherWeb to enhance their learning. Provide some details for each way identified.

The first way that a student could use TeacherWeb to enhance their learning is by using the calendars to stay up-to-date with all the different assignments and class activities happening in class. It is known that when students feel unprepared, they are a lot less focussed and will have a much harder time succeeding in the classroom. Also, this site would enhance their learning by offering lots of helpful links that they can use to practice all the different subjects that they learn within my classroom. In these ways, a TeacherWeb site would definitely help enhance students' learning.

Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom

1. Discuss which of the multiple intelligences you have strengths in and then discuss some of the core characteristics of that (or those) intelligences. Discuss which of the core characteristics best describe you and your learning style.
I found that I got very strong results for Kinesthetic, Musical, Intrapersonal, and Existential intelligences. However, I'm choosing to focus more directly to my Kinesthetic results because I have always found that it is a consistant result for my learning styles. Of the Kinesthetic Core Characteristics, I would say that the "Concrete" characteristic best describes me because I always remember things a lot better if learning them involves some sort of movement.

2. Discuss what students with this type of intelligence enjoy, are like, or tend to do within classroom settings.
In the classroom setting, students with this type of intelligence enjoy hands-on activities, appreciate doing interactive activities, and have very good gross/fine motor skills.

3. Discuss how you will support this type of intelligence within your classroom and within your teaching.
Within my teaching, I will be able to incorporate this specific learning style by obviously involving a lot more hands-on activities, as well as doing more dramatics in my teaching and using more manipulatives when teaching more factual-based subjects, like math.

4. Discuss what technologies stimulate thus type of intelligence.
Technologies that stimulate this type of intelligence are construction tools, like wheels, pulleys, screws, levers, and other objects. Also, I could incorporate tools like joysticks and other forms of technologies that can be used as manipulatives and other objects that require hand-eye coordination.

5. And finally, discuss how you might impact student learning by applying your understanding of learning styles and multiple intelligences within your classroom.
I will impact students in a positive way by studying, understanding, and applying all the ideas and facts that I just learned about this and other learning styles from the Multiple Intelligences test.

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