Research - Case Studies
Mt. Airy Elementary School: Case Study
Mt. Airy, Maryland

Thinking and Maps
Thinking Maps are the paper of my mind.
(third-grade student, Mt. Airy)

If text on paper is what we produce for linear communication. Thinking Maps are the paper for the mental mapping that goes on in our brain and through our minds. The U.S. Department of Education-sponsored publication, Put Reading First (Armbruster, 2002), targets both semantic maps and graphic organizers as the keys for unlocking text structures and reading comprehension and as bridges to writing prompts. The strength of graphic organizers is the visually scaffolded structure of each form. The weakness is that there is a static nature to many of these templates and an episodic use of the tools by students. There is also a glass ceiling on thinking: Students go from grade to grade, classroom to classroom across schools, often filling in prestruc tured blanks on a worksheet without much reflection or higher levels of thinking.

Thinking Maps provide the dynamic thinking patterns and thus the cognitive link to common text structures. The tools also link these text structures to organization patterns often found in writing prompts, and this is shown in summary form in Figure 6.2. For example, the ability to comprehend a text based on "problem-solution" depends on the student understanding the fundamentals of cause-effect reasoning. Cause-effect reasoning is an essential thinking skill for being able to produce a coherent and well-organized piece of writing in response to a prompt based on prediction (see Chapter 7, Empowering Students).