Concept Mapping

You can utilize concept mapping in many ways. Five of those ways consist of:
1. Using concept mapping to help students explore the four seasons. Having them create pictures that symbolize each of the seasons and clumping them together with similar symbols. This is a great way for young learners to understand the four seasons.
2. Using concept mapping while learning the “Base Ten” unit may be helpful to some students. Creating base ten blocks in each of the thousands, hundreds, tens and ones place, and allowing students the opportunity to draw blocks in each of the place values.
3. Using concept mapping anytime you want your students to categorize a group of something like fruit, trees, the different senses, and vegetables, having them draw and categorize these items is a great way for them to have a further understanding of the categories.
4. Using concept mapping when students are learning the many sources of energy. Once a student realizes that energy comes from a variety of sources like from the sun, they can create a concept map that extends their understanding of all of the places that energy come from.
5. Using concept mapping when learning new concepts in math. This can be done while learning addition. A student could create a concept map that displayed all the number combinations that added up to 45.


1. Having Concept mapping software available for my students would be a great thing to have in the classroom when teaching content. As we have been learning, students learn in a variety of ways. Some are audio learners, while others are very visual learners. Utilizing concept mapping would be very helpful for these visual learners. It allows them to process their thoughts and ideas through a visual method. They are able to see what their thinking process is, and therefore, are more likely to be able to clearly convey their thoughts. Also, utilizing technology in the classroom is a great way for teachers to get their students excited about learning, and allow their students time to interact with technology in an academic environment.

2. I do believe that anytime you introduce something into your classroom that it is vital to be completely comfortable in teaching it to your students, so that you do not confuse them in the process. As a future teacher, I would love to integrate this software into my classroom, because I think it would be helpful. The problem is, I also know how technologically challenged I am, and I am worried that I would not be able to understand it well enough for myself. I think I could learn how to use if efficiently in about a week if someone were to sit down with me and show me how to use it. If not, I think I would get overwhelmed and just end up not using it.