The saying, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything starts looking like a nail,” is as aptly applied to students’ search for meaning as it is for a carpenter building a house. In order to embrace the complexity of the content and respond to it skillfully and confidently, all learners, and especially English language learners require a highly developed set of cognitive processes supported by the necessary tools to give full expression to their ideas.
read the complete article (pdf file)

The Tricky Fox: A Thinking Maps & Writing Lesson for Kindergarteners
The Kindergarten students learned how to visually represent this thinking by using the Bubble Map.  The students have also been studying elements of fiction – plot, setting and characters.  During this lesson, integrating technology and Thinking Maps, students will create a Bubble Map about the character Fox from The Gingerbread Boy (by Paul Galdone) and use it to write a sentence about him.
read and see the teacher's planning and lesson...

What Educators Have to Say...
The insights from teachers and administrators below are from the documentary The Language of the Mind.

...I've always wanted to be a teacher...
...I became a teacher to make a difference...
...and then there was Thinking Maps...
...I love thinking about books with children...
...the research tells us we are at risk... the largest minority group in our nation... ...to make sure they are great thinkers, major contributors, articulate, and capable... ...because of the visual nature of Thinking Maps the children quickly grasped the concepts behind each of the maps... ...the teachers began to look at these children differently... ...challenged their thinking... awakened their curiosity...
...Thinking Maps have proved to be an important initiative in our district... ...provides our teachers and students with a means to organize their thoughts and to be able to analyze and present their ideas... ...particularly important in a district of our diversity... ...regardless of English proficiency... contribute to the overall classroom discourse...
...when the children sit down to work the curriculum becomes much clearer and more evident to them because they have that visual representation... ...within the reading context, within their social studies, science, math... ...really analyze the topic they are learning and start to think about which maps they are going to use and why...

Weblinks
New Rochelle School District

Wiki on New Rochelle School District

• download PDF file of current research with Thinking Maps
• read more research on Thinking Maps on the Thinking Foundation research section
• read the chapter on Thinking Maps in the book Visual Tools for Transforming Information Into Knowledge