With all the emphasis on developing higher-ordered thinking skills, it is easy to overlook the fact that before students can think critically about content, they must first understand its basic terminology, the concepts represented, and the relationships between these concepts. Thus, learning subject matter content becomes a mental building process, enabling students to actively construct a conceptual framework to which new concepts are added, related, and refined. This article presents one method of concept mapping and several ways it can be used in the classroom. Features of a Concept Map Maps are constructed using circled terms to represent concepts. A linking word or phrase is used to clarify the specific relationship between two concepts.
Lines connect concepts vertically, and arrows connect concepts horizontally.
Organization is Hierarchical. This way, the map is organized in the same way that humans organize and store knowledge. This also gives students a place to begin map construction and assesses their basic understanding of the concepts and their relationships to each other. A group of vertically related concepts is called a map segment. The specific relationship between general and more specific concepts is shown with words or phrases called linking words.