Concept Mapping

1. Identify the major idea, concept, or essential question that you would like for students to explore in depth using the Concept Mapping strategy.  
2. Explain to students that they will be creating a Concept Map and show them an example.
3. Introduce the major idea, concept, or essential question and ask students to brainstorm relevant words, phrases and ideas. They may do this independently, with partners or as a whole class.
4. Have students write the major idea, concept, or essential question in the center of a piece of paper and sort the ideas from their brainstorming to graphically organize them on the page.  When doing this, students may organize their brainstorming around putting similar ideas together or by the types of relationships they see, such as hierarchy, timeline, small to large, etc. They can use lines, arrows, color, etc. to represent how ideas are connected. If you have a particular format or template of a Concept Mapping graphic organizer that you want students to use,  provide it to them for use during this step.
5. Use an Academic Dialogue strategy such as Paired Verbal Fluency to have students share their Concept Maps with a partner and explain their thinking around the connections they made and build on and clarify their thinking.

• There is no right or wrong way to make a Concept Map. The one key step is to focus on the ways ideas are linked to each other. 
• Concept Mapping can be used before a unit of study to generate ideas and determine prior knowledge, and then revisited and revised during and after the unit based on the new knowledge.  
• When students are learning to use Concept Maps, it is a good idea to use content that is relevant and accessible to them so they can focus on the process more than the content.
• You can find a variety of printable and digital Concept Mapping templates online.

Concept Mapping Symbols