Mapping is a simple and wonderfully versatile technique that you can use with your colleagues and kids for brainstorming, organizing thoughts and generating ideas. They can be used to define a curriculum, plan a project, select a theme, develop a simple story or to add energy and enthusiasm to a repetition-based exercise such as pattern writing.

Whether you're doing a project with the whole class, breaking up into teams or working on individual projects, mapping should be a part of almost every group activity—and you should do lots of group activities. The reason is practical as well as philosophical. If you allow group members to suggest their own ideas and make their own decisions (within the parameters of your educational goals, of course), they will be much more engaged, positive and enthusiastic than if you make all the decisions yourself and simply distribute assignments. What's more, two minds are always more creative than one, and 10 minds are even more so. Kids will come up with a lot of great ideas that would never occur to you, so use that fact in every way that you can. For more, see A Collaborative Approach to Learning.

The Mapping Concept

The particular mapping technique described in this section is based on asking a series of questions that elicit thoughts from the group. The illustration below shows a sample template.

The process creates a bull's eye-type map in stages. In the center, you start by identifying your project; then, in each concentric area, you record the group's answers to the questions. By the time you finish with the final area, you have a map that tells a number of stories and will help you make a decision about your ultimate goal. That, of course, is the most important key to making the map work: spending a lot of time in advance thinking about the goal and the questions you're going to ask.

Mapping Materials

• A large pad of white paper at least 2'x3' (preferable) or an erasable whiteboard or blackboard.
• At least four different colors of markers or chalk, as suitable for your display board.
• Depending on your project, you may also want sheets of paper, preferably large ones like the pad, for each group member or team so they can work on their own maps.

A Mapping Example

Suppose that you've already decided to take two field trips during the upcoming term—but you haven't decided where to go. You gather your colleagues together and use a mapping project to make the decision. Before you begin, you need to know the following:

• The topic to be mapped (in this case, field trips).
• The goal of the process (in this case, "to decide where to go on two trips"). Note that the goal may not always be the same as the topic. For example, perhaps you're doing a planning session with your colleagues and only want to come up with a handful of possibilities, which you'll then take to the kids for a final decision.
• The questions you intend to ask.
• Any essential background that will affect the questions you ask or the guidance you give before starting the process (e.g., maybe the term is dedicated entirely to learning about music).

Step 1: Identify the Project or Purpose

As group leader, you'll facilitate the process at the head of the room. Take a marker and write "Field Trips" in the center of the whiteboard. Now circle it, as shown in the illustration below. The center of the map always contains the name of the project or purpose to help keep the group focused.

Step 2: Gather Initial Ideas

Take a different color pen. Now, ask the group your first question and provide any necessary background, but keep both very simple. If you have to ask a complicated question or give a lot of instructions, you're doing too much at one time and should break it down into more steps or multiple maps.

If you have a lot of leeway with your curriculum, you might ask, "Where can we go?" as shown in the illustration below. If you had already decided that the term was to be focused on music, you might ask, "Where can we go to learn about music?" or "Where can we go to hear music?" or even "Where can we go to hear live music?" Remember, you've got to spend time before the session considering your goals and questions because you are looking for focused creativity and input.

Especially with kids, you may have to get the ball rolling by making a few suggestions of your own or by picking out people and asking them the question directly. Once things get moving, if someone is consistently quiet, call on him or her specifically. Go ahead and make compliments or jokes as suggestions are made—the exercise should be fun! Just be sure that you're positive and energetic, and never judgmental. Even if someone's idea is off base, that's not important now. You're just brainstorming, and you'll make your decisions later. If you create the right environment, people will be excited because you are asking for their ideas and input.

As kids or group members shout out their ideas, write them on the board around the outside of the bull's eye. Try not to range too far across the page, because you have at least one more ring to add. Move fast and keep talking to maintain everyone's energy level and enthusiasm. Keep enough control so that you can hear what everyone says, but don't stifle the group's excitement. That's another reason to ask focused questions—you want to write just a word or two for each answer, not long phrases.

Use your instincts to determine how long to let this round continue. If suggestions are starting to slow down or the page is filling up, move on to the next step. Just be careful not to dampen the enthusiasm if things are really clicking. Remember, one goal of this kind of activity is to inspire collaboration, teamwork and camaraderie. If that's happening, keep writing: It's worth it. Once you decide to end this round, let the group know—perhaps even warn them—by saying, "We'll take just a couple more..." Look over what you've written, and be encouraging.

Graphic organizers work with any age group or skills level, from kindergartners to adults. If kids are too young to read, draw a simple picture instead of writing the word. Better yet, do both, especially if part of your goal is to work on elementary language skills.

Step 3: Refine or Advance the Ideas

Draw a ring around what you've written, and ask your second question. This question can go in many different directions, depending on your goals. As shown in the following illustration, you might ask, "What can we do there?"

Other questions might be, "What can we learn there?" or "What projects can we do when we return?" A poor question would be simply "Why?" because that's too open-ended and doesn't get people to focus on a goal. In our music-based example, we might have asked, "What kind of music will we hear there?" or "What kind of projects could we do after the trip?"

We almost always use three levels in this kind of map, but that's not a magic number. Sometimes you may want to use more or even less, depending on your objectives. Keep the following points in mind, however. If you only need one round, clustering may be a more effective technique because it is better for letting the mind ramble freely (while tracking where it's been). In contrast, if you need many more than three rounds, you're probably tackling a topic that is too big or too complex. Try breaking the topic into multiple steps or using multiple maps that build on each other. Or, you might be ready for a more traditional outline.

This time you'll look for suggestions tied to the ideas in the map's center. Start by modeling this difference. Direct the question first to one of the inner ideas by asking, "What would we do at the museum?" With a different color pen (different colors help add a unifying visual dimension), write the suggestions outside the new, larger ring. Try to keep them in the general vicinity of the ideas to which they relate. If you're working on a well-focused concept, however, you'll find that many of the suggestions in this ring will apply to more than one idea in the middle ring. If so, that's great, and it shows one of the advantages of nonlinear graphic organizers over traditional outlining. Again, maintain an encouraging tone, and let the group range freely from one of the inner-ring ideas to another. It helps if you can be somewhat orderly by dealing with each inner-ring idea one at a time, but ideas will come when they come, so be flexible. Again, use your instincts to determine when to end this round.

Running out of room on the page? Try this: Take two sheets of paper and tape them together along the long edge. Now take the sheet you've been writing on and tape it in the center of the combined pages. Now you have twice the space and didn't lose a thing.

Mapping Results

Notice anything about what we have in our map? If we follow different paths, connecting the ideas from the bull's eye to the outer ring, we can create logical sentences that tell a story:

• On our field trip, we could go to the museum to learn about paintings.

  Notice how so many of the thoughts in ring 3 apply to more than one idea in ring 2?

• On our field trip, we could go to the museum to learn about colors.
• On our field trip, we could go to the library to learn about colors.
• On our field trip, we could go to the library to learn about books.
• On our field trip, we could go to the library to hear a story.
• On our field trip, we could go to the zoo to hear a story.
• On our field trip, we could go to the zoo to feed the animals.

Let's return to our goal. Which field trip do we want to take and why? We could almost decide now, or we might revisit each of the ideas in more depth. If we wanted to, we could create follow-up maps dedicated to each place and ask additional questions to continue to refine the topic. If, for example, we were trying to plan an entire project for which the field trip was just one activity, we might go on to a new map to plan something like, "How can we tell people what we saw at the zoo?"

You can see that mapping has many possibilities. See, for example, the articles on planning a project, developing story ideas and using pattern writing exercises.

Related Topics
Brainstorming, Organizing Thoughts and Generating Ideas
Developing Stories With Maps
Using Maps for Pattern Writing Exercises
Using Graphic Organizers: Webbing
Using Storyboards