I started using mind mapping after reading I Can See You Naked: A Fearless Guide to Making Great Presentations by Ron Hoff (1988). My first presentation was drawn out like a colorful board game with a route to follow, arrows, and picture images of what I was going to do.

I remember thinking how much easier it was to use than index cards with a text script written on them. It was also much less restricting. I did not feel tied to reading the cards. Rather, I looked at the picture and went from memory. It saved me from the plight of many presenters: that of being tied to a script.

The technique worked so well for me that I started expanding the idea into my teaching efforts. As I read selections from English texts to my students, I drew the events out on paper in a map and graphic format. I would often interject silly ditties and exclamations of passion into the effort to make what I was reading to them stick out in their memory.

Given that my students were at the ‘cool’ age of ‘teen,’ they would often look at me and say, “You are crazy!” My pat answer was always, “Yes, I am, but you’ll remember this because of it.” Moreover, they did.

Students learn and remember graphic organizers better if they create them out of their own mental images and patterns. As a parent who has spent my children’s lifetimes trying to teach them how to learn, I was very excited when I walked into my daughter Shivahn’s college apartment and found mind maps, mnemonics, color, etc. all over one of her walls.

Now, it’s not unusual to find mandalas on her door or on her walls or flashcards scattered about, but this was a huge mind map made from recycled 8.5 X 11-inch pieces of paper. I had no idea what it all meant, but I do know it helped her to get an A in the course. My daughter co-wrote a book with me, Umm…Studying? What’s That?, so it’s reassuring to know that she didn’t ‘just’ write the book but also used the strategies and shared them with her peers.

Research Background for Mind Maps, Etc.

Many experts agree that developing cognitive maps and using advanced organizers increases critical thinking skills.

Long-term memory files information in the brain through patterns, procedures, categories, pairs, and rules. A mind map uses at least three of these five ways to store information, therefore helping the brain remember information better.

A classic mind map begins with a word, phrase, or idea typically placed in the center of a piece of paper. As the author of the mind map expands upon the word or phrase in the middle, the mind map expands to include various ideas that come to mind when considering that central prompt.

Graphic organizers enable the brain to categorize information. A mind map is a non-linguistic representation method of organizing information that enables students to file the information away in long-term memory in multiple modes or memory packets.

The post Mind Mapping: An Effective Strategy for Differently Wired Brains appeared first on Susan Fitzell.

Condense information into a picture and embrace the power of color. Teachers often present information verbally and linguistically. However, many of our students are visual learners. A substantial amount of our brainpower is devoted to visual processing. When teachers add visual learning strategies to what they are teaching, student recall improves.

For example, after teaching for five or six minutes (or up to ten minutes in a high school class), give students three to five minutes to draw a picture, diagram, or symbol of what they just learned. This visual learning strategy lets students take the verbal linguistic information we just taught and turn it into visual information. This lets the brain process and use information in a different way that, in turn, helps students better remember what has been taught.

When we use drawing exercises in the classroom, we often encounter resistance from students. They complain that they can’t draw. One way to address this is to draw badly when we draw in the classroom. Use stick figure drawings and emphasize the importance of simple line drawings over drawing well. The point is to create an image that helps us remember what we’ve learned, not to get graded on our art.

If students say they can’t draw, pair them up with someone who doesn’t mind drawing. It would be a shame to lose students because of their initial resistance to doing something so different from what they are used to doing in school.

Snapshot Devices

Another way to present information visually is to use a snapshot device. Snapshot devices take the concepts we have already talked about to another level; their purpose is to take a snapshot of information and represent it visually so students will remember it. For instance, you’ve taught about how the West was settled and explained that certain inventions were involved, such as the six-shooter, the windmill, the sod house, the locomotive, and barbed wire.

A snapshot device is a picture with all of the things you have taught in it. It’s a scene, not just a collection of individual pictures. If you draw pictures of a six-shooter, a windmill, and a sod house with no way to relate these things to each other, then you are drawing ‘unconnected’ images. With a snapshot device, you take the information and make it into a scene to think about. Students will remember the cowboy with the six-shooters and the train coming down the hill behind the sod house. They will see the scene in their mind’s eye.

Assessing with Visuals

When students engage in drawing what they have learned, teachers have an opportunity to walk around the room and assess understanding by looking at students’ drawings and asking questions for clarification. Document your observations and you will have a form of authentic and immediate ongoing assessment.

For more information on differentiation and Response to Intervention, see Susan Fitzell’s book, RTI Strategies for Secondary Teachers.

Bring Susan to your campus!

Featured seminar – Response to Intervention (RTI) Strategies

The post Visual Learning Strategies that Support Really Terrific Instruction (RTI) appeared first on Susan Fitzell.