English Learning Techniques - Custom Mindmaps

• English
• Lower Secondary (Key Stage 3)
• Upper Secondary (Key Stage 4)
• Further Education (Key Stage 5)
• GCSE

English Learning Techniques & Templates

Mindmaps for Digital Roleplay and Analysis of Texts

Welcome

In these slides you will find examples and templates for using LessonUp's mind map function in ways that will add an extra element of interactivity.

LessonUp's Mind Map function is a great way to engage your learners, drawing on a group's ideas and storing them easily. 

May have to split this slide.

LessonUp lets you use Mind Maps in ways that you couldn't just writing on a whiteboard.

The following slides are examples and templates that will suit English subjects. There are explanatory notes on each one!

May have to split this slide.

Digital Roleplay

MISSION BRIEFING

In pairs focus on the following pairs of characters:

Desdemona and Othello

Iago and Emilia

Bianca and Cassio

Desdemona and Emilia

Prepare a digital roleplay - what conversation will they have. You will perform it live via the mind map function. Your tutor will select pairs to perform. You may use modern language - but you must communicate in character.

The rest of the group will then identify quotations the discussion was based on.

DIGITAL ROLEPLAY

Use this to have your learners take part in a different kind of roleplay!

Drawing on their own experience of social media, the pair should rehearse and then perform a roleplay as if the characters were communicating with each other.

The 'mission briefing' contains further details.

Want something simpler? Take a look at the next slide!

The conversation could be based on a particular scene or be broader.

You will need to arrange the mind map bubbles in a coherent stream as they come in to emulate social media chat apps.

When finished drag all the bubbles to the bin and start with another pair.

You can allocate pairs or let them choose!

A Streetcar Named Desire version!

In this example you could get students to draft what they expect the dialogue to be between Stanley and Blanche in scene 10.

Then choose pairs, one at a time, to submit their contributions - the bubble can be dragged and arranged, performed in real time but taking away the fear some students have of delivering a role play activity.

Considering the sensitive subject matter, 'digital roleplay' allows students to take a step away and perform in a more abstract but still tangible way.

This is a template for the digital roleplay. Swap out the placeholders for any two characters in any texts!

ACT 1

ACT 2

ACT 3

ACT 4

ACT 5

In this activity I've imagined  a Shakespeare play. Just add or remove and reshape the boxes as you need. 

Control the contributions of your class with the timer. The timer is draggable if you were worried it would get in the way!

Ask them to write everything they can remember that happens in Act 1. You can drag all the contributions to the correct box.

Repeat the process for each act!

You could just as easily create a separate page for each act. Go ahead, it's your lesson!

FOR

AGAINST

YOUR QUESTION HERE

Really simple template that will actually not just work for a variety of texts but multiple subjects.

Run the mind map in two phases, 'for', and 'against' - drag the bubbles to the appropriate box though!

Point

Evidence

Explanation

Link to text

A PEEL variant! 

Again do this in phases, only this time you could have a class discussion each time about which is the best point.

The required evidence will depend on the consensus. 

You will need to shepherd the bubbles of course! 

AO1

AO2

AO3

AO4

YOUR QUESTION HERE

A variation on the last slide focused on assessment objectives with an additonal timer added.

ADJECTIVES

ADVERBS

NOUNS

PROPER NOUNS

YOUR QUESTION HERE

With this version you can go through a text and have your learners identify groups of terms.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

WILFRID OWEN 

You could use a mind map to have students fire out their impressions of a poem in a less pressured way, even though it still encourages rigorous engagement.

Alternatively you can use mind maps to annotate texts live!

Have students contribute ideas and drag their bubble to the right place.

You could use a spinner to pick students if you wanted. 

The next two slides are the rest of the poem!

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

WILFRID OWEN 

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

WILFRID OWEN 

Thank you for looking through these templates, 

We hope you find these useful and have fun making your own mind map variations for your students!