Thinking+Maps

Thinking Maps Training:
Day One: Nov. 3, 2009 Today, I (Carol) had the opportunity to go to the first of 5 days of training on Thinking Maps.

There are 8 different maps that go with 8 cognitive skills; Defining, Describing, Comparing and Contrasting, Classifying, Seeing Whole-to-Part Relationships, Sequencing, Analyzing Cause and Effect, and Seeing Analogies and Relationships. Thinking Maps provide a common visual language in classrooms and whole schools. Each visual representation is linked to a specific thought process. By connecting a visual design with a specific thought process, students create mental visual patterns for thinking based on these 8 cognitive skills.
 * What are Thinking Maps you ask?**



1. The map is not the end. It is how you take the information off the map that matters. Maps are a middle tool. 2. If teachers use these maps, they start to ask, "What kind of thinking are we doing today?" 3. Maps are the thinking not just an activity 4. These maps CAN be used in math! 5. The language of objectives shows the language of thinking. 6. No copies necessary....kids draw them themselves.
 * Things that really made me say, "oh yes!"**

1. Aren't these just graphic organizers that some one has put in a book and is selling? Aren't our teachers using them or do we need to train them on really HOW to use them? 2. How do we train ALL our teachers on this...or do we? 3. Are we telling the students how to think? Or is this just helping them organize their thinking????
 * Things that are still rolling in my head?**

My group's example of all 8 thinking maps..... remember we had a guy in our group! When you first learn about these maps you use things you know so I have to tell you Holidays as a "subject" isn't real deep!!!

Day Two: Nov. 4, 2009 Today we started becoming trainers VS being trained. We continued to work with the maps but started to have the maps become "deeper." By putting a frame a reference around each map it can change the thinking that happens.... Hard to explain but is pretty cool.

In this picture you see Mikayla and I working hard, however, we have a note from the "Salesman" that it was his fault we didn't get our assignment done. But you can see that these maps can be used as preassessments or assessments for learning. The box (frame of reference) is around these that guided our thinking. Yes, we did more than just math topics! 1. They really can make our kids THINK..... 2. Teach less, Learn more. 3. VERY VERY low prep.... no black lines needed....
 * New things that really made me say, "oh yes!"**

1. Aren't these just graphic organizers that some one has put in a book and is selling? Aren't our teachers using them or do we need to train them on really HOW to use them? If they are used as a language of learning then they become more than graphic organizers. 2. How do we train ALL our teachers on this...or do we? The biggy is.... I can't train others to train others..... if you train you have to go through what I am going through right now ($600). If you train teachers, they HAVE to have the binder ($120 each). This is a very big expense. But if we really had buy in it would be worth it. But this isn't just a one time training.... this is a 3-5 year plan and we would need it if we did it. 3. Are we telling the students how to think? Or is this just helping them organize their thinking???? This is just a way of them to organize their think.... visualize it. The more I have worked with these maps the more I can see their potential to facilitate critical thinking (21st century skill)
 * Things that are still rolling in my head?** Answers

**Does anyone have any questions you would like me to ask?** CAROL ROCKS!!!

Day Three: Nov. 5, 2009 OH MY GOODNESS Today was pretty powerful on what can be done with these Thinking Maps. We looked at vocabulary development.... good stuff We also looked at the TEKS (This was really great). We looked at the verbs or thinking levels of the TEKS and put them into which map or type of thinking we are asking the students to do. Many TEKS took more than one map. It was amazing to see that even the "Identify" TEKS could be brought up to a much higher level of thinking than just identify!

Just this afternoon when I got home, I had an email that talked about the rubric not being kid friendly and could we change it to different words. So I suggested the "defining in context" map. Where the kids define the words that we think aren't kid friendly such as understanding, organization, computation.... Using this circle map the kids could define it and then (amazingly) it becomes kid friendly. The outer circle had a lot of the words she wanted to use on "new" rubric. Okay, Okay! I know this doesn't look new, or great... but if all teachers used this kind of map for brainstorming then we have a "common language of learning" and each year the kids didn't have to learn a new graphic organizer that the teacher thinks works.... They only have 8 maps for 8 types of thinking and soon the kinds start to visualize their thinking....

Anyway, cool stuff but I don't know if the district can spend this kind of money. I would love to share more with you if you want.

Day Four: Jan. 13, 2010 Thinking maps for note-taking. We took an article, looked at the "thinking" going on and used the maps to take notes, define academic vocabulary and then wrote summaries. We also took it to the level of So What?..... why should we have read this article?

Thinking Maps in Math. Here we took at math word problem and using a Brace Map broke it down into its parts. Then, thinking has a mathematician, we wrote what we would need to know to be able to solve this problem. Then using a Flow Map, we wrote out step-by-step what needs to be done to solve this problem. Then under the Flow Map we added the boxes that did the actual computation. The fun part was each group did one part of it and then passed it on to the next group to do the next part until the last group did the computation.... then we passed it back to the original group check.

Reminder: The maps are a mid-level tool. The important part is taking the information off the maps and doing something with it.

Day Five: Jan. 14, 2010 Question we all had..... "AREN'T THEY JUST GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS?" Well the answer is yes, but here is an interesting fact. When I googled graphic organizers I got this.... And this is only 12 of the 908,300 images I could have gotten. Today we took a "Teacher Heaven" book of graphic organizers and found that only 8 different kinds of thinking happened in them..... so think about the student if every assignment or every teacher uses different graphic organizers to help them with their thinking..... The students are more worried about the organizer than the thinking. If all teachers on the campus at all levels use the same organizers than it helps the students "visualize" the thinking that is going on. Of course, we teachers like "cute" but the kids creativity can make them "cute" and that is so much better!

We also took some "worksheets" and selected different thinking maps that could be used instead..... it was incredible how much better the thinking, discussions, and learning could be then what happens on those worksheets. Also the saving of copies from the copy center would be great!

Thinking Maps are pretty cool! I could really see how if a campus "bought" into them and really used them, continued the training, follow-up, and excitement just how much learning would improve.