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Tarot of Teaching, Part 7: Concept Mapping

  • Mar 2
  • 2 min read

The Tarot of Teaching deck is a creative tool designed to enrich and energize the structure of a class period. It divides the flow of a lesson into three key stages, each represented by a different category of cards: Starting Our Journey (the beginning of class), Along the Way (the middle of class), and Reaching Our Destination (the end of class). Each card within these categories offers a unique teaching tip aligned with its intended time in the class period, making each session more engaging, organized, and impactful.


Need to catch up? Check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.


Front of ToT card 7, showing an image of someone about to embark down a winding path on a journey.

Concept Mapping


A blank sheet of paper and dedicated time to organize ideas can become a powerful learning intervention. Concept mapping allows students to create a personalized, visual representation of their understanding.


A concept map begins with a central idea. From there, students brainstorm related concepts, identify relationships, and draw connections among them. Over time, the map expands into a web that illustrates the complex relationships between ideas. Concept maps can focus on a single lecture, a unit, or an entire course. They can support the learning of new material, synthesis across topics, or brainstorming for projects and papers.

As Blumberg notes in Making Learning-Centered Teaching Work, “Human memories can be renewed and are constantly changing.” Learning is an active process of revising and strengthening connections, and concept maps make that work visible.


To learn new material, students must connect it to prior knowledge and encode it in working memory. Concept mapping supports both processes:

  • Connection to prior knowledge. The open-ended structure of a concept map encourages students to integrate previous experiences and existing knowledge with new content. They must actively link what they already know to what they are learning.

  • Encoding through organization and elaboration. Research shows that information is encoded more effectively when learners organize and elaborate on it. Concept maps require students to make intentional choices about structure, hierarchy, and relationships. Drawing connections and expanding ideas promotes deeper processing.


The back of ToT card 7, explaining how to implement a concept map.

Concept mapping also values individual representation. While students may share core ideas, each map reflects unique connections shaped by personal experiences and prior learning. This challenges the notion of a single “correct” representation and instead emphasizes exploration, meaning-making, and intellectual growth.

Concept maps can also serve as a longitudinal learning tool. Returning to a map later in the semester and adding new ideas, perhaps in a different color, helps students see their own intellectual development. Although concept maps are often created individually, they can also be crowdsourced in small groups or as a whole-class activity, fostering collaboration and community while strengthening shared understanding.

References


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