Cara+Jessop's+Mindmeister+Romeo+&+Juliet+Lesson+Plan

Collaborative Mindmapping

 Instructional Sta n dards In the lesson plan involving collaborative mindmapping, students will meet the 9th grade language arts core curriculum standard 2.3., which is that students will be able to comprehend literature by evaluating the contribution to meaning of several literary elements within a work of literature. For this activity, students will look at literary elements such as setting, character, plot, theme, symbol and motif. Students will also learn more about the author of the work and will also incorporate quotes from the play.

 Introduction to Activity Collaborative mindmapping could be used with virtually any content, as a note taking strategy, formative assessment, or summative assessment. Studies have shown a significant increase and enhancement in learning when students use mindmaps. For the purposes of my activity, students will work with another student to create their mindmap as we read the play //Romeo and Juliet//. The mindmap will act as a note taking device for all students which they can use during and after reading the play to complete various assignments in this unit. Students will create their mindmaps with mindmeister.

 Lesson Activity Outline Because students will make the mindmap step by step and at different times, I’ll outline only one of the lessons that would go along with the map. The first lesson for this unit will be an introduction to William Shakespeare. I would look at various aspects of Shakespeare’s life, work, and contribution to literature. Throughout this discussion, students are to take notes, which they then put into their mindmap. Ideally, each student would be at a computer so they could be creating their mindmap as I teach, but students can easily create their mindmap outside of class as long as they have the information from class. Once students have the basic information from their notes in their mindmap, they are to add pictures, links, notes, icons, and attachments to the notes. This will expand the concepts we discussed in class and give students a chance to further explore them. Lastly, after each student has put the information into their own mindmap, they will give access to one another student to their mindmap and they will both look at each other’s map. They can add any information from their partner’s map to their own. They have to add at least two things to their partner’s mindmap. Ideally, the two students would make one mindmap collaboratively, instead of each their own, but I need to adapt this for the purposes of the classroom and individual accountability. <span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Students will repeat this process of taking notes in class, adding the information to their mindmap, adding extras to their mindmap, and then sharing and adding to their partner’s mindmap. <span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">In addition to teaching about Shakespeare, I would teach students about the characters, setting, symbols, themes, and motifs in the play. Students would be required to include each of these important concepts in their mindmaps. At the end of the unit, students will turn in their mindmaps with a written reflection of the experience.

<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">(Note: I just figured this out so in case you were like me and didn't know how to move the screen to see the whole mindmap-just click and drag. Also, I added some links in some of the concepts so make sure to check those out. One is a song by the Killers...) media type="custom" key="7836637" width="110" height="110" align="left"