Create interactive class brainstorming activities

Start a mind map or a virtual wall to explore a topic

Use a mind map to brainstorm around a central theme or topic with branches or use a virtual wall to add ideas, images, links and videos to inspire creative thinking. A perfect exercise for researching a new topic or creating a virtual inspiration wall around a subject like what are the skills students will need for jobs of the future.

Create a single map for the whole class or multiple maps for each group whilst being able to safely monitor and control access. Easily see which students are the strongest contributors and give feedback to students easily.

Capture answers and give feedback quickly

Create questions for your subject and have students answer individually. All answers are grouped under the same heading allowing you to easily compare and score responses.

Set up the map so that student answers are annonymous to each other but visible to you, allowing you to share what “makes a good answer” with the class to accelerate their learning.

A quick way to consolidate learning and focussed on unanswered questions.

Wind up your lessons with a quick 3-2-1 exit ticket which lets you quickly ask the class to share 3 things they have learned, 2 ways they can apply what they have learned and 1 question they still have. This helps them to reflect and revise the topic, think about a practical application and pose questions that can then be used directly to improve your lesson planning.

Create tactical strategies to improve comprehension and retention.

Whether you want students to learn a new term, or you want to chunk down a piece of text, you can scaffold their learning while giving you insight into how well they are going. Adding and associating images can help with retention and provides a richer learning experience.

Help students see different perspectives and build their EQ

Using design thinking skills helps students become more human and customer focussed when creating new products and services. Templates such as the value proposition canvas, empathy maps and business model canvas build creative and empathic skills to foster the student entrepreneurial spirit.

Capture the student voice, sentiment or evaluate a lesson.

Create a poll or survey to capture everything from revision questions, student sentiment to getting feedback on a lesson. You no longer have to switch tools to run a quick poll or survey exercise. Responses can be shared in real time or extracted as a report for later use.

Teacher or peer to peer assessment

GroupMap’s slider or score rating means you can quickly set up a marking rubric to score a presentation and provide feedback. You can also set it up so that there is peer to peer feedback and GroupMap will automatically tally up the average of all scores, like this example of assessing a student pitch competition.

Strategies to build student inquiry skills and high order thinking

Develop independent thinkers by having them pose questions to be explored and to create new understandings. Foster curiosity and help students learn how to ask the right questions and discover new possibilities. This is especially good in science subjects such as brainstorming variables in a science experiment, but can also be used for any subject.

Implement strategies for developing critical thinking skills in students

Touted as one of the most important 21st-century skills, the ability for students to think critically can help set them up for the future workforce. By asking the right questions, students can apply prior knowledge and experience. It could be something as simple as creating a class debate and asking students to build up arguments or more in-depth such as supporting project-based learning challenges.

GroupMap is not just for the classroom. Use it at your PD days for idea generation, resource sharing and lesson planning. Create your own STEM initiative, team-plan a lesson plan or unit of work or just use it as a way to workshop ideas in real time. This helps make PD much more interactive, time efficient and informative by utilising the wisdom of the crowd.