Use Mind Maps to Improve Your Learning
Teaching is one of the most demanding jobs we can do. We have to create, re-create, be reflexive, be comprehensive, abide by regulations and standards, be interesting and effective, and perform multiple tasks when developing our teachers’ lesson plans that ensure we are staying fresh and creative with each unit and each repetition of each unit. I am sure there are many more duties, responsibilities and expectations that come with teaching and with crafting our teachers’ lesson plans, quizzes, and tests, but I will digress…as we teachers know the details. What we need more of is not actual commiseration but tools that show commiserative agreement. That is, what we need more of is collective exchange of our original teachers’ lesson plans.
In my online studies and practice, I have found such collectives—teacher communities and forums where instructors at all levels offer free teachers’ lesson plans, and where we can exchange the same.
For example, one of the best sites I have found for teachers’ lesson plans for English Composition and Literature is Erica Cassel’s “Helpful Handouts for Students and Teachers.” This site, or these pages, include downloadable writing, reading, and writing about reading materials—on everything from writing research papers to poetry and other literary terms to analysis of The Odyssey and Romeo and Juliet and To Kill a Mockingbird.
More absolutely stunning English teachers’ lesson plans are found on Carla Beard’s Web English Teacher—an exhaustive and comprehensive site that includes thousands of teachers’ lesson plans in multiple and various subcategories, including Shakespeare, Media and Literacy, Poetry, Study Guides, exquisite ideas or actual literature lesson plans, and much, much more.
And one of the most impressive and effective of sites with English teachers’ lesson plans is at the S.C.O.R.E. site: comprehensive and interactive Language Arts CyberGuides for units for k-12 include such teachers’ lesson plans as those for students reading The Crucible (students visit real “witch” memorial sites and participate in a role-playing exercise wherein they are the accused); To Kill a Mockingbird (students prepare foods and pay visits to their community in the deep South); and Things Fall Apart (students work with colonial maps and modern maps, studying the territorial changes, for example).
So many other sites exist for teachers’ lesson plans—including the databases for teacher lesson exchange at Teachers.net and TeachersFirst—that rather than include them all here, I offer the above, to keep you going for months to come. Then, I will wish you the best of research and teaching in the future.
Keep listening or reading, watching for the first main sub-theme.
When you come across the first major sub-theme, pick a spot on the page to jot down a few key words that sum up the sub-theme. Draw a circle around the sub-theme words, and then join your sub-theme circle to the main theme circle with a line.
Each time you come across a new major sub-theme, write down a few key words to summarize the new idea, and draw a circle around those words. Then draw a line to join the sub-theme circle to the main idea circle in the center of the page. Eventually you will have a circle in the center with several spokes radiating from it.
The lines or spokes don’t have to be straight, and they can be of any length required. The "circles" don’t have to be circles; they can be squares, triangles, or oval squiggles if you prefer. You can use different colors to help you organize the ideas better.
As the speaker or writer continues to present his ideas, you will find that some of the ideas being presented are additional supporting details that clarify or illustrate one of the sub-themes you have already identified. In this case you will write these "sub-sub-themes" down using just a few words, enclose them in a circle or squiggle, and link them to their sub-theme with a line.
Eventually your sub-theme circles may have many spokes radiating from them as the author or lecturer continues to present his ideas. At a glance you will be able to take in the dominant themes of the talk and the underlying organizational structure of the ideas.
If you happen to have any ideas of your own while you are reading or listening to the lecture, jot them down as well. This shows you have your brain actively interacting with the material.
When you make a mind map or a learning map of all your notes, you create a very visual document that differs a lot from traditional methods of making notes for class.
People who learn very well visually will particularly benefit from the way that learning maps clearly show the relationships between main themes, sub-themes and supporting facts and ideas.
Try this method and see if this is the note-taking technique that works best for you!
This article was written by learning expert Royane Real. If you want to improve your learning, get her new short report "Your Quick Guide to Improving Your Learning Ability" at www.royanereal.com. | 
