Generate, Sort, Connect, Elaborate: Concept Mapping Significant MOMENTS in a Work

Posted on by

This activity asks students to individually identify significant moments in a work and collaboratively connect the moments to ideas, issues, and other moments in the work.  This helps students trust their instinctive, personal response to moments, scenes, confessions, etc. and then reflect on the reasons why these moments are significant, including how they may connect to more abstract ideas and issues developed in the work as a whole.

Process

  1. Give students 2 minutes to individually generate a list of significant moments that come to mind when they think about this work.  Each moment should be identified on a separate sticky note.
  2. Ask students to formulate groups of 3-4.  Instruct group members put all their sticky notes on a desk or board.
  3. Instruct students to silently sort their collective significant moments according to how central or tangential they are to the work. 
    1. Significant moments that are central to the work should go in the middle; less significant moments can be placed in the periphery. 
    1. Repeat moments can be stacked on top of one another.
  4. Ask students to discuss the placement of the sticky notes.  Do all group members agree?  Should any significant moments be moved?  [2 minutes]
  5. Instruct students to connect their significant moments by drawing arrows between moments that have something in common.  (They can use cut out arrows or whiteboard markers to do this).  On an index card, ask students to explain how the significant moments are connected in a short sentence (e.g., cause and effect, character arc, conflict development, etc.).  The index card should be placed between the two moments/sticky notes.
  6. Give groups 5-10 minutes to discuss and elaborate on any of the ideas they have written so far by adding new notes that expand, extend, or add to the group’s initial work.  New significant moments (sticky notes), arrows, and explanatory index cards may be added during this process.
  7. For each significant moment or “chain” of significant moments, ask students to identify:  What ideas, issues, or feelings are raised and developed through these significant moments?  Ask students to write a statement for each significant moment or chain of significant moments on an index card.  Place the index card near the corresponding sticky note(s). 
  8. Ask students to take a picture of their concept map of significant moments and place it in their portfolios.
  9. Give groups time to take a gallery walk to read and discuss other groups’ concept maps and statements.
  10. When students return to their seats, ask them to reflect in their portfolios:  What makes a moment in a work “significant”?  What similarities and differences did you observe between your own group’s work and other groups’ work? 

Variations

  • IB teachers may instruct students to identify significant moments in response to a specific “global issue” or “course concept”.  This activity could then serve as a brainstorming exercise for selecting passages for the Individual Oral or developing a topic for the HL Essay.

References
Adapted from “Generate, Sort, Connect, Elaborate”, a “Making Thinking Visible” activity from Harvard’s Project Zero.

Image by Manfred Steger from Pixabay