Becky's+Mindmeister+Lesson+Activity

Becky Tucker's Mindmeister Lesson Activity Plan Instructional Standards:

- Students will understand the process of seeking and giving information in conversations, group discussions, written reports, and oral presentations.  - Students will write informational and literary text to reflect on and recreate experiences, report observations, and persuade others. 

Mindmeister:

- Watch online tutorial in class ([]) - Practice using the tool in class, encouraging students to participate ([|www.mindmeister.com]) - Teach students how to collaborate and share mindmaps

Assignment:

Create a mindmap focusing on one character from the play //A Raisin in the Sun// by Lorraine Hansberry. Have clusters of thought that deal with race, relationship to family members, dreams, personality, and anything else you feel is important for this character. Share the map with those in your group so that they can contribute new ideas to your ideas to help you organize. Connect similar ideas using the connect function on Mindmeister. Add icons and images as are appropriate to make the mindmap interesting and easily accessible. Once you have finished adding ideas to each of the main ideas, put stars next to the ideas that interest you the most and that could be possible subjects for your final paper. Finally, create a PDF file with your mindmap and submit that, along with a potential thesis for your final paper.

Keep in mind the guidelines for the final paper: - Examine one main character from //A Raisin in the Sun// and come up with an arguable thesis about how they contribute to the play as a whole and why they are invaluable or not to Hansberry’s arguments. Make sure to make it clear to your audience why the ideas that the character helps to convey are important. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; msofareastfontfamily: 'Times New Roman'; msolist: Ignore;">- <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Narrow in your ideas so that you are doing a close-reading of the text and not summary or general ideas without enough evidence to back them up. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; msofareastfontfamily: 'Times New Roman'; msolist: Ignore;">- <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Also, avoid fluff in your writing. Make sure that you have valid claims and enough evidence to support them. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; msofareastfontfamily: 'Times New Roman'; msolist: Ignore;">- <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">4-6 pages, Double-spaced

Here is an example of what one of the mindmaps might look like: