Concept Maps for Meaningful Learning

As a Language Arts teacher, I have always found concept maps to be very reliable tools for getting students involved in the writing process, especially brainstorming and organizing their thoughts before, during and after reading. I especially encourage students to use them when writing summaries and preparing to write essays. With the summaries, students can pick out the main idea and the sub points and create their own maps to show their understanding of what they have read. They can then use the map as a guide for writing their summaries. This is helpful as many students like to pick sentences directly out of the passage rather than write it in their own words. The concept map encourages them to search for the relevant information and put it in the right order. I also use concept maps as a personal tool.

The article by Cañas and Novak(2008) showed a wide range of uses for the concept map. For example, I learned about using connecting lines for linking words and phrases to show relationships and even the development of a focus question. I will definitely share this new understanding with my students in the coming academic year. Other content area teachers can also use concept maps for concept and vocabulary development with their students.