Engaging Students with Concept Mapping

Concept maps are a great tool to use in an elementary school classroom for several purposes. They can be used for many subjects to get students to think in different ways. If I were to use concept-mapping software in my classroom, I would likely use it for social studies, math, or writing skills.
For social studies lessons, I would use concept mapping in the form of Venn Diagrams. I feel that Venn Diagrams would be very useful for comparing different groups of people or civilizations. I saw one example on the Kidspiration website that demonstrated the similarities and differences between Native Americans and Colonists. Based on this example, making Venn Diagrams for social studies lesson plans would be beneficial because it would force students to see similarities and make connections between things that they normally wouldn’t have seen.
In a math class, a concept map could be used for teaching fractions. I feel that teaching fractions to students is most effective when visuals are used. There was a terrific example on Kidspiration with an adding fractions problem. The problem showed 2/8 + 3/8= 5/8. Along with the typed problem, there was a picture of a bar divided into 8 pieces. Of those 8 pieces, 2 were colored yellow and three were colored red, which is helpful for visual learners. Concept mapping software could also be used with math to make visual aids for a story problem. This could transform math in a classroom by getting skeptical students to see it as a fun and artistic subject.
With older students, the primary way I would use concept-mapping software is to help them with organization when writing essays. Concept maps are good for helping students organize and distinguish the topics and details of their body paragraphs, as well as to help them see where they are missing information or could make connections between ideas.
Although I’m pretty sure that it would take me awhile to learn how use Concept mapping software to its full potential, I think it would be worthwhile if I was teaching an upper-elementary level class. Not only could I use concept mapping software for visual presentation aids, I would be able to teach the kids how to use the software to benefit their skills in many academic areas. However, I feel that younger students (K-1st graders) would probably become quickly frustrated with this software and it would take more instruction to teach it than is worthwhile.