Cultivate the exploration of scientific thinking ability of elementary school students through mind maps

The No. 2 Experimental Primary School of Shangqiu City, Henan Province Han Songshi

Content Summary:

Modern teaching pays attention to the cultivation of primary school students' thinking ability, and the use of mind maps in primary school science teaching can help students build a complete and effective knowledge system, clarify the methods of learning context, and improve scientific thinking ability. This paper mainly discusses strategies for cultivating primary school students' scientific thinking ability through mind maps: using mind maps to cultivate students' good thinking habits; Use mind maps to cultivate students' comprehensive thinking ability; Use mind maps to cultivate students' creative thinking skills; Use mind maps to expand students' ideas of inquiry.

Keywords: mind map; Primary Science; Thinking skills

Science education in primary schools has shifted from "knowledge-centered" to "inquiry-centered". The key to cultivating inquiry ability is to cultivate scientific thinking, but in our science class, there will be research activities after the end of the research activities, students in the report, language expression defects, can not clear, organized, complete expression of their ideas, in group activities, some students do not participate in learning activities, can not achieve the expected learning goals, students' thinking can not be exercised. For example, the introduction of mind maps into the actual primary school science classroom teaching can effectively change the phenomenon of teachers teaching and passive acceptance by students in primary school science teaching.

First, the core concept of mind mapping

Mind mapping is the use of theme keywords, images, colors, etc. to establish memory links, intuitively and effectively express each knowledge point with mutual affiliation and related hierarchical diagrams, which is in line with the characteristics of primary school science "logical", "divergent", "comprehensive" and "practical" disciplines. The use of mind maps can lead students' thinking direction through visual learning, which can make it easier for students to grasp the structure of scientific knowledge, understand its abstract concepts, improve logical thinking ability, and strengthen memory ability. Constructing a scientific knowledge system while promoting exchanges between teachers and students and students, realizing teaching according to aptitude, and improving the efficiency and quality of teaching is an important way to effectively improve students' scientific literacy and exercise scientific thinking.

Second, the study of mind maps

Mind map is an expression of divergent thinking, it pays equal attention to pictures and texts, and the use of colors, images, and symbols makes thinking more personal and multifaceted. It is a new learning strategy for students, which is relatively unfamiliar to most students and does not know how to operate, so using group cooperative learning to complete the mind map at the beginning of the learning stage can make students learn faster and easier.

At the beginning, we let students do it with strokes, choose a categorical content during the learning process, and let students choose a topic and multiple concepts, so as to develop students' ability to separate the "core content" from a lot of knowledge. Teachers ask students to draw or write "subject content" in the center of the paper and highlight the theme as much as possible through color, pattern, and text variation. Because this theme content is the soul of the mind map, it is also the cornerstone for students to construct their own thinking structure. Place the sub-concept on the secondary branches, and select only one keyword or keyword on each branch, which is concise and self-explanatory. Keywords or keywords should be well-typed and concise, but the sub-general sea should be rich in content, and the sub-concepts of different branches should be connected by cross-section. Because it is a course studied, students are required to choose sub-concepts to standardize. Different students have different learning focuses and experiences when learning the same content, and this difference and multifaceted nature can be reflected in the different mind maps they produce. Let students start from understanding the theme and connecting language, gradually cultivate students' ability to distinguish different levels, and let students build a multi-dimensional, multi-level, multi-centered, divergent scientific thinking mode. Finally, students can add some colors and pictures, which can make the mind map more vivid, rich, and more conducive to students' memory.

Third, mind map cultivates students' scientific thinking ability

Mind map this new thinking mode and learning method, for science teaching injected fresh blood, produced new vitality, through teaching practice, found that the use of mind map in science classes, not only so that students' interest in learning, learning ability has been significantly improved, teaching methods have been significantly improved, the most important thing is that students not only master good thinking methods, but also scientific thinking ability has been significantly improved.

(1) Use mind maps to cultivate students' good thinking habits

Many students are overwhelmed and unable to start when answering questions, which fully exposes their difficulties and obstacles in the process of knowledge application, and this obstacle reflects that students only have scattered knowledge in their minds and do not establish a good scientific cognitive structure. Teachers in the new era can not only impart knowledge, but also teach students the method of learning, the method of thinking, so that students take the initiative to obtain information, it is necessary to train students to use mind maps to take notes or class summaries, establish the connection between knowledge, and form their own cognitive structure. Not only have a macro and overall grasp of the knowledge learned, but also grasp the status and level of each knowledge point in the whole at the micro level, so as to solve the problem of students' "scattered sand, not essential". For example, when teaching the fourth grade book "Rocks and Minerals", I first ask students to collect stones before class, observe the color, pattern, grain, etc. of granite, sandstone, and dali rock in class, and then classify them on this basis, and finally draw a mind map around this theme, and students deepen their understanding of the characteristics and types of various rocks in the process of drawing.

(2) Use mind maps to cultivate students' comprehensive thinking ability

Cultivating students' comprehensive thinking ability and inquiry ability is the basic requirement of science courses. In unit review or total review, by constructing a mind map, it helps students grasp the main knowledge, clarify the basic knowledge points, master the logic and correlation between knowledge, build a knowledge network, and achieve "seeing both the trees and the forest", which improves the review efficiency and cultivates students' comprehensive thinking ability. For example, when explaining "Food and Energy", students generally do not understand the concepts of food chain, food web and ecological balance, and I teach some abstract knowledge through mind maps in teaching, so that students can learn easily, understand the relationship between them, and not easy to forget.

(3) Use mind maps to cultivate students' creative thinking ability

The colors, lines, images, keywords and connections in the mind map make our left and right brains work synergistically, make full use of "whole brain" thinking, and maximize the creative potential of the brain. The radioactive way of thinking of mind mapping is the natural way of thinking of the human brain, which makes the storage, management and application of data in the human brain more systematic, thereby increasing the efficiency of brain operation and opening up the unlimited potential of brain creation.

1. Clarify your thoughts and show the fluency of your thinking. By constructing a mind map, the scattered knowledge points are effectively organized together, which not only deepens memory, enhances understanding, but also makes thinking more organized, organized and fluent.

2. Pay attention to communication and improve the flexibility of thinking. Practice has proved that when making mind maps, students who often communicate with their surrounding classmates in various aspects have strong flexibility in their thinking: conversely, those who communicate relatively little with classmates are relatively weak.

3. Cultivate originality of thinking through imagination. Creativity and imagination permeate the mind in order to form creative thinking. Primary school students' imagination is very strong, but without the correct guidance, they cannot quickly develop in the direction of abstract reality and form creative thinking. When building a mind map, teachers should allow students to have whims to open up a broad space for students' thinking. Mind mapping training is to enlighten students' wisdom through thinking training. In view of the situation that some students have weak foundation and poor thinking ability, the use of mind map can transform the abstract thinking in their minds into a picture that can be felt, which not only improves learning interest, but also cultivates innovation ability, which is conducive to the improvement of students' thinking ability.

(4) Use mind maps to expand students' ideas of inquiry

Conjecture is the first step in scientific inquiry, and valuable conjectures make scientific inquiry more productive. On the basis of using mind maps, students can also record the internal connections between knowledge in an orderly manner in an intuitive and visual way. Teachers can accurately understand the process of changes in students' thinking in the process of inquiry.

In short, the use of mind maps in science classes can promote students' thinking development, improve students' learning ability, thinking style and improve human behavior. At the same time, it also records the weak links in the development of students' thinking, so teachers pay attention to the cultivation of students' scientific thinking ability in their usual teaching, and with the help of mind maps, students can learn scientific thinking while learning scientific knowledge.

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Editor: Chen Jiao