Master student Zhomartova Gulnaz

E.A.Buketov Karaganda State University, Kazakhstan

Using Thinking Maps in Polylingual Geography Teaching

What are Thinking Maps?

Thinking Maps were developed as a language for learning in 1988 by Dr. David Hyerle. There are eight maps in this language that are used by teachers and students for reading comprehension, writing process problem solving, and thinking skills improvement. Through quality training, materials and support services, designs for Thinking will support learning communities with the tools necessary to become successful thinkers, problem solvers, decision makers, and ultimately, lifelong learners.

Thinking Maps are used and promoted in schools of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia and other countries¹.

I have learned about Thinking Maps when I was searching for something different for my students on the internet. Kazakhstan is a young country, and educational programs are still being developed. And, I hope that Kazakhstan will know and discover for itself the benefits of Thinking Maps in near future and will use them in education system of the country.

What is Polylingual Teaching in Kazakhstan about?

The President N.A. Nazarbayev spoke about “Linguistic Triunity” in the Republic of Kazakhstan several times in the course of various formal addresses. For the first time this idea was read on October, 2006 at the ХІІ^th session of the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan where the head of the state has noted that knowing at least three languages is important for the future of our children.

Nursultan Abishuly in his Message of 2007 «New Kazakhstan in the new world» has suggested to begin step-by-step realization of the cultural project “The Unity of Three Languages”. It was marked out as a separate line of the domestic policy along with spiritual advance of the people of Kazakhstan. “Kazakhstan should be perceived all over the world as highly educated country which population speaks three languages. They are: the Kazakh as the state language, the Russian as the interlanguage and the English as the language of successful integration into the global economy”, - said the President. In other words, the idea of triunity is expressed by a simple and a clear formula: we develop the state language; we support the Russian language and learn the English language.

Thereby, Kazakhstan, having headed for mastering three languages by its citizens, proceeded from today's realities - “Linguistic Triunity” will be evidence of the competitiveness of the country. The linguistic wealth involves a powerful socio-psychological effect of «open thinking» loaded to retrieval of new knowledge. And, the citizens themselves speaking several languages fluently will be competitive individuals both in the country, and abroad².

N. Nurmakov specialized boarding school for gifted children is one of those 33 schools implemented the trilingual teaching since 2007. The subjects such as biology, mathematics, physics and geography are taught in the English language for Native Kazakh speakers. The geography subject is taught in 7-9 grades at N. Nurmakov School for 3 years by now.

Thinking Maps in the geography classroom at N. Nurmakov School

I have discovered for myself that this is what I can definitely use in my teaching. I did not hesitate at all and have started using this wonderful technique immediately in my lessons after several training myself at home using materials and video trainings of www.mapthemind.com/thinkingmaps website.

Thinking Maps helped my students from the very first day, although they were not familiar with them. It is a very good strategy for English Language Learners because it takes away the necessity to speak and write English. There are several students in my classroom, who have the language barrier to speak, and now, they are able to cope with the fears through sharing their ideas using Thinking Maps. And, most importantly, I have found that it matches the content standards of the state.

Although, Thinking Maps are new at school where I teach, they have become a part of my teaching geography in English.

In my classroom I use Thinking Maps so that students can compare and contrast, sequence, classify, and specify the reasons of their ideas. They are much improved in their reading, writing and geographically thinking in comparison with I had to see at the first time.

Below, you can see examples of using Thinking Maps in my geography lessons. Those are taken from the Lesson Plan on topic: “Africa’s Nature” which was made using the Bloom’s Taxonomy. In that lesson students learned to be able to represent the information using “Double Bubble map”, “Tree map”, “Flow map”, “Multi-Flow Map” along with diagrams “Spider” and “Fishbone”. I will show only the part of the lesson from 3 to 6 levels.

Task 3. Compare and contrast two continents: South America and Africa. Write their similarities and distinctions.

Task 4. Make a guide “A journey to Africa”. Classify, group, categorize, sort different places of Africa (water-land).

Task 5. Put in order, cycles, patterns, describe processes of the problem: Increasing of the deserts size in Africa. How it can be explained? Is it possible to prevent it?

Task 6. Show and relate the causes and effects in the climatic conditions of Africa in “Multi-Flow Map”.

These are the examples of some of the students’ answers.

Conclusions

At the classroom level, I have found:

ü Thinking Maps are easy for students to use;

ü They are helpful for differentiation, especially with English Language Learners;

ü I can use them in my assessments;

ü They are very interesting both for students and teacher;

ü Students learn more efficiently and more effectively;

ü I can easily measure students’ knowledge and grade them;

ü I am able to track students’ performance on time;

ü Once they have learned working with them, they are able to use them during other lessons as well;

ü They can be used in any content area or grade level.

Now, I am sure that Thinking Maps are one of the best methods at teaching geography in three languages.

References:

1. www.mapthemind.com

2. The Message of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan «New Kazakhstan in the New World», 2007