Science Lesson on Keeping Warm Class IV - Creating a KWL Mind map

My students began the science unit “Keeping Warm” with a range of understanding and experience. It was important to find out what they already know (and more significantly, what they presume they know) before I planned any lessons related to this unit.

To create a KWL mind map, students could use a word processor, a mind mapping software or on an online mind mapping tool such as MindMeister available at www.mindmeister.com. I chose the online mind mapping tool Mind Meister for this learning session. After individually writing what they know and want to know about heat, students contributed to a whole class KWL mind map using Mind Meister (Appendix-2b). MindMeister gave students the opportunity to create, edit and revise their KWL mind map collaboratively. If this mind map was created using MS Word or Inspiration, then students would not be able to contribute to it at the same moment and thus valuable class time would have been wasted. MindMeister promoted visual thinking among the students. Using it, students could get the opportunity to share their experiences as well as post questions which were answered by the class as they progressed through the unit. This also helped me to stay informed about their learning difficulties and plan my lessons accordingly. MindMeister is an easy to use and free web application that facilitates students to brainstorm collaboratively. Its simplicity helps in retaining students’ focus on the task. In case of internet connection problems, students can continue to work on Mind Meister using the Google Gears offline library. The changes are automatically updated once the students are back online. Students were able to access this mind map from home and continually update it. This ease of access and collaboration would not be possible if students do individual KWL in their notebooks or on charts. Most importantly, it allowed instant collaboration which is not possible without using ICT. This consolidated KWL continually gave me a very clear picture of the learning process for the whole class.