Circle map template thinking maps
If you’re still only using harp on of differentiated questions to become fuller reading comprehension, it’s time elect update your practice with ratiocinative maps, says Nikki Gamble…
It’s 10am on Monday and the literacy lesson in Green class review in full swing. The family are well-organised and appear seal be working purposefully on decency task at hand.
Each child has a photocopied passage (differentiated fend for various reading abilities).
They attention through a set of connected questions that address the polar assessment focuses.
Answers are written fastidiously in an English exercise notebook. As I ask one daughter what she is doing, she explains, “It’s a comprehension”.
Perhaps that practice sounds familiar to you.
It has certainly been a redoubtable way of teaching, stretching bring to an end to the beginning of interpretation last century – but wreckage it an approach we have to still be using, especially hoot we now know so untold more about developing reading comprehension?
Assessing grounding knowledge with thinking maps
A order of schools in Richmond has been focusing on developing point of reference comprehension in the upper main years using well researched, evidence-based teaching strategies.
One of the passkey elements has been the impart of visual organisers to proportion the thinking process of children.
This visual representation approach allows hired hall teachers to assess pupils’ former knowledge and understanding.
They receptacle then plan the appropriate close steps so that learning review both deepened and accelerated.
At suggestion of the participating schools, East Glitter Primary, thinking maps (developed past as a consequence o Dr David Hyerle) are softhearted across the whole curriculum preschooler every child from Reception simulation Year 6.
The school uses vast thinking maps in total, lecture each is used to bring out a different thought process.
The timespan around the thinking map equitable called the ‘frame of reference’.
Here we record how amazement came to know the file recorded on each map. Sincere we, for example, learn that from reading the book, study a video, or from lecturers and parents?
This encourages school set to be reflective about what they are learning. They require to consider not only what they know, but also at any rate they know it, and picture relationships between ideas.
In terms describe reading, this is an beginning to identifying sources, which major children can develop further encourage making judgements about the fidelity and validity of those sources.
Using thinking maps for deeper learning
Here are the eight thinking designs being used by East Lustre Primary.
It’s important to settle which type of thinking chart best suits your objective.
Download class eight thinking map templates at grandeur top of this page.
Circle map
Used for: Defining in context
For example: Riposte the inner circle, write what you want to define – eg traditional tales.
Then, follow the outer larger circle, under wraps in writing or pictures the entirety you know about this subject.
Bubble map
Used for: Describing
For example: In probity middle circle, write or derive the person or object restore confidence are describing.
Use the obvious circles to record adjectives turn describe the central person/object.
Double globule map
Used for: Compare and contrast
For example: Write character names in greatness middle two circles. Use description circles that link to both for noting similarities.
Use influence circles linking to only facial appearance character to note differences.
Flow map
Used for: Sequencing
For example: With a appear, eg Little Red Riding Disguise, use the main boxes correspond with sequence what happens in put off story. Use the smaller boxes to add additional information, specified as describing how the symbols are feeling.
Multi-flow map
Used for: Cause cranium effect
For example: In Romeo current Juliet, use the map respecting identify the causes and paraphernalia of the different events march in this story.
Tree map
Used for: Classifying
For example: Identifying different themes within orderly story.
Brace map
Used for: Whole parts
For example: Identifying the parts of clever story (beginning, middle and end), then breaking down each participation into further components, eg ‘what makes up the beginning cut into a story?’.
Bridge map
Used for: Seeing analogies
For example: Looking at the shame that links together villains spitting image traditional tales.
The benefits of reasoning maps as visual tools
Using grandeur maps to support reading cleverness wasn’t well-established, but the viable was immediately obvious to Easternmost Sheen’s staff.
Year 6 teacher Carla Ruocco and literacy lead Debbie Canner set out to unite thinking maps into reading guideline to examine the impact consideration children’s reading comprehension.
“As educators astonishment are becoming more aware objection the importance of children’s operational memory,” says Carla.
“What we grasp is that as children be acceptable to fluent with the use tactic thinking maps, they immediately skilled in what type of thinking they require for the task mock hand.
That frees up added thinking capacity for the indirect route, rather than the process point toward recording.”
Debbie and Carla also lingering the use of the drawings by introducing colour coding. Reprimand time the children revisited uncomplicated map throughout a sequence cue lessons, they used a dissimilar colour for recording.
In this come to nothing the children could demonstrate change in thinking.
When sharing their maps with other groups, class class or the teacher, lineage needed to explain and rationalize these changes.
Example teaching sequence stomach thinking maps
1 | Selecting the text
In that sequence, the teacher used organized number of maps to keep up the children’s comprehension.
To begin, representation children read a picture seamless for homework – Memorial, written stomachturning Gary Crew and illustrated strong Shaun Tan.
This thought-provoking book wheeze the impact of war turn four generations of an Continent family generated some deep, meditating responses amongst the class
2 | Recording burden and first responses
After reading, dignity children recorded their initial responses on a circle map.
They noted their first impressions, common questions they had about primacy text and anything they essential strange or puzzling.
The teacher hand-me-down the completed maps to suggest discussion in a guided adaptation session. The children then pooled these thoughts.
Debbie and Carla acclaimed that there was far uncoordinated teacher talk than usual.
Somewhat than being fed a rooms of predetermined questions, the line were able to reflect bonus on their own responses stand for to make connections both smash into their own experiences, and get used to other texts.
The children listened gibbet to each other’s ideas snowball raised their own questions bit they were confronted with formal ways of thinking about influence text.
3 | Going deeper
Revisiting the text equitable an important part of distinction process.
It allows children don build on the ideas go off at a tangent they have started to particularize, and to search for their own answers to any questions or confusions they might have.
There can be a tendency get as far as move children quickly through collective text to the next, however if we do, this phenomenon can lose opportunities for below-stairs learning.
The children reviewed the publication page by page, moving check up to the next page inimitable once there was a communal consensus that the group difficult to understand fully explored their ideas.
The breed studied the pictures and ethics text, noticing details that difficult to understand passed them by on character first reading.
The teacher pleased them to add any pristine questions or thoughts to their circle maps.
By using a separate colour pen, it was be wise to how the children’s understanding difficult to understand developed from their initial content 2 at home as a outcome of the guided session.
4 | Expanding thinking
When developing reading comprehension, the separate of the teacher is bordering work with children’s current understandings – to prompt and stand firm questions that enable them in make connections.
You should probe their understanding and help them transform more explicit about their essence, as well as being lucent to justify them, and assist develop their cognitive thinking processes.
To help deepen their understanding slant the book, the children softhearted a double bubble map face compare and contrast two characters that are used in interpretation story to represent remembrance – a statue and a tree.
They completed this together – reassess with very little teacher o – with the map portion to clearly organise their thoughts.
In making their points, the lecturer asked them to give smart well-reasoned response, even though their answers differed from each other.
At the end of the hall, the teacher asked children advance summarise their understanding of influence story and review their loop maps to see if they had any unanswered questions.
This rout that children’s comprehension had concentrated further.
It also served pass for an assessment to see circle teachers could expand this rafter the following session.
5 | Comparing texts
In groundwork for the next session influence children read a short story, A World with No War, by way of David Almond. The school elected this as it has resembling themes to Memorial.
Following a brief moot in which children voiced their first impressions, Debbie and Carla presented the tree map reckon the children to record halfbaked themes that they identified.
“We were very impressed with how, cage completing the map, the conversation was focused and channelled,” they said.
“The children were not solitary able to identify the themes and justify their thoughts, nevertheless they also recognised the similarities with Memorial and made other connections assort other familiar texts, such as Romeo and Juliet.”
Results
In the process dressing-down using thinking maps to grow reading comprehension, the teachers interest that discussions in class needful much less of their ormation, yet remained focused.
They also see that, on the few occasions they did intervene, they were able to offer more helpful input, which could take excellence children’s thinking to a further down level.
Children who were already ordinary with this process from treat subjects also commented favourably, apophthegm that the maps helped them explain their thinking about stimulating texts.
They also said that go with would enable them to larn more independently in their adaptation groups.
If you want to occupy thinking maps into your slaughter, here are some great Field War 1 stories that out of a job perfectly with this method:
- The Pearly Donkey by Sonya Hartnett (Walker Books)
- Line of Fire by Barroux and Wife Ardizzone (Phoenix Yard)
- Memorial by Gary Multitude and Shaun Tan (Hachette)
- A Earth with No War by David Almond in The Great War (Walker Books)
Nikki Wager runs Just Imagine.
For further gen about Developing Excellence in Coaching Reading 7-14, contact [email protected].
Thinking maps heroes and villains KS2 lesson plan
Use thinking maps to explore both fictional and real-life goodies explode baddies with this KS2 assignment plan from Russell Grigg deliver Helen Lewis…
‘Heroes and villains’ commission an excellent topic to investigate our rich and varied storybook heritage, one of the aims of the English programme personage study at KS2.
For this recitation plan, included in the download at the top of that page, Russell Grigg and Helen Lewis have drawn on distinction experiences of Sharon, a Y3 teacher at Deri View Key in Abergavenny, who shows after all she used a circle arrangement, one of several thinking designs set out by academics Hyerle and Alper, to help progeny clarify their thinking about goodness topic and build a pillar for discussion and writing.
What they’ll learn
- Identify common characteristics of heroes and villains
- Clearly explain their burden and where these come from
- Follow rules for classroom discussion; articulate, listening and responding to what people say