24th August 2012 12:21
By Blue Tutors
Mind Mapping
Mind mapping helps to brand information in pupils’ brains according to an article in last weeks’ TES by Simon Porter. And it certainly seems worth a try. Every week I ask my students what features they need to look for in texts and every week it seems like I’m getting blood out of a stone.
Next week I’m going to try mind mapping!
Mind Mapping is an effective way of taking notes and remembering information. Crucially, it changes the form of the information and this is what helps it stick in the brain. Instead of getting them to list, verbally or in writing, what those features are, I am going to ask them to draw them out on a piece of paper in a way that should help them remember the following week.
It’s creative learning and, hopefully, more enjoyable, relying on the links we make in our brains between one thing and another. I’m hoping that remembering stick people ‘doing’ things will be easier than remembering to look for verb patterns and that musical notes may help a student remember to look at the metre of a poem.