How Mind Maps can Encourage your Reluctant Writer in 5 Easy Steps.
Do you dread homework time, especially when your child has to produce a piece of written work? I feel your pain! The memory of my own child flopping down to the floor (literally) at the thought of writing, while I mustered every scrap of patience I had, is etched into my memory forever.
What I didn’t know then, but can share with YOU now is how MIND MAPS can help to cut homework time down in half and banish the writing battles for good.
Mind Maps are a creative and simple way of getting ideas out of your brain and down onto paper. They are made up of pictures, colours, lines and key words. They are easy to make and can help you to:
Remember better
Organise your thinking
Get ideas down quickly
Have more fun!
Here is how to make a Mind Map in 5 easy steps:
Use a BLANK SHEET of paper and place it sideways (landscape).
Draw a circle in the middle of the page and put a picture inside that represents the MAIN TOPIC.
Draw CURVED lines (branches) coming away from the circle. How many branches is up to you but each one will represent an IDEA that you have about the main topic. For example, if you were writing a story, you could have 5 branches which could be the beginning, build up, problem, resolution and ending. Label them to remind yourself what each one is.
Draw a PICTURE for each one of the branches. Using pictures and COLOURED pens or pencils will help the RIGHT side of your brain to get involved with the task. This is IMPORTANT because that is the part that THINKS and REMEMBERS in pictures and also where your IMAGINATION lives. Sometimes words by themselves can get in the way of this creative process.
From each of the main branches, you can draw other connected wavy lines. These lines will represent the smaller details of the bigger branch. Be careful to not label your pictures. For example, if you draw a house don’t waste words by labelling it ‘house’. Save your words for the things you don’t draw but you know you will need along the way.
Remember your brain can imagine ideas QUICKER than you can write or draw, so this could get MESSY. That is how it should be because Mind Maps are a creative TOOL and as they say ‘creative people don’t leave a mess, they just have ideas lying around everywhere!’
I teach how to use Mind Maps for fiction and non-fiction writing on my programmes. So, if you would like to learn more about how they are the secret formula that can get better grades with less work contact me on zoe@myamazingmind.co.uk for more information.
