Teaching History Through Thinking Maps
• Graphic organisers have been used for a long
time to teach History in an ad hoc and
eclectic way.
• More recently, David Hyerle and Chris Yeager
have introduced ‘Thinking Maps’® in reaction
to this eclecticism.
• Their approach is highly prescriptive and
requires students to select out of only eight
‘Thinking Maps’ without modification
(although students are permitted to use more
than one map per activity).
• This approach has been linked with Art Costa
and Bena Kallick’s ‘Habits of Mind’ ® another
systematic and prescriptive methodology.
• The teachers Marj Brown and Charles
Dugmore, being iconoclasts, have eclectically
raided the cupboard of both approaches as it
were, and simply used what they wanted and
when they wanted it, in a largely ad hoc
basis, to teach a wide variety of Historical
themes across all levels of High School with
fascinating results.
Why use ‘Thinking Maps’ ?
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The ‘Thinking Maps’ have been used by students to
prepare for essays, short tasks in class, as well as to
summarise or understand concepts, political stands,
cause and effect, the flow of events with examples
at each stage, and to compare and contrast people,
and groups, or events.
This presentation is offered as a way of inspiring
possibilities in students to learn by mind mapping
History so that it does not become a series of facts
to be learned by rote.
It also enables students to access a deeper level of
learning that makes use of non-textual information
to make sense of historical information.
Roedean School (SA) has commenced with a
process of becoming a registered ‘Thinking School’
and has, over the past few years, adopted Habits of
Mind and a range of cognitive approaches including
the Thinking Maps as developed by Hyerle and
Yeager.
The students are becoming familiar with these
maps and they were introduced into History lessons
in 2014 in a number of lessons.
Here are the 8 maps in more detail.
The Circle Map – Defining in Context
The Bubble Map – Describing Qualities
The Double Bubble Map – compare and contrast
The Tree Map - Classifying
The Brace Map – Part - Whole
The Flow Map - Sequencing
The Multi-Flow Map – cause and effects
The Bridge Map – seeing analogies
Using the Circle Map and Double Bubble
Map: Indians in South Africa (Grade 8)
Using the Circle Map and Double Bubble Map:
Indians in South Africa (Grade 8) Lesson Plan
Using a ‘Multi-Bubble’ Map to teach Nazi Germany to
Grade 9s Lesson Plan
Using a ‘Multi-Bubble’ Map to teach Nazi Germany
to Grade 9s The Multi-Bubble Map
Using a ‘Double Bubble’ Map to teach Civil
Society Protests – Lesson Plan
Using Thinking Maps/ Graphic organisers to represent an
essay: Grade 10 Essay on the ‘Mfecane’
Grade 10 students were given the task of
synthesising a range of causes in a critical
way.
They had to respond to a topic that stated, ‘The
Zulu kingdom was just one of several important
African states that had an impact on the
instability in Southern Africa in the period 1750
to 1835’.
Most started by looking at the role of the Zulu
as the sole or main factor.
They then subjected it to a critique.
They then began to unpack all the other
factors:
• Ndwandwe and Mthethwa
• Environmental Factors
• Trade with Portuguese at Delagoa Bay
• The role of the Boers, Griqua and Kora
• The ‘chain reaction’ caused by Mzilikazi’s
Ndebele
Example One
Example Two
Example Three
Example Four
Example Five
Findings and Conclusion
• Our eclectic approach had given them the
confidence to experiment with their own
forms of Thinking Maps that produced a
better, more accurate version than Hyerle
and Yeager’s versions would have produced.
• The lesson we take from this experience is
while prescription has its place, students are
too diverse in their thinking to force them
into one of eight ‘channels’ as the Thinking
Maps are presented.
• History is too complex to be accommodated
in the straitjacket of a single Thinking Map.
• If we want students to think critically and
creatively about their own writing and
thinking processes. To promote adaption,
modification, creativity and complexity, it
necessarily requires a more flexible, eclectic
approach in the teaching Thinking Maps than
the authors prescribe.