Bubble Map

Description
The Bubble map is used to describe things using adjectives or descriptive phrases. It is a tool for enhancing people's ability to identify qualities and use descriptive language.

Classroom Practice
A Bubble map could be used to develop descriptions of one or more a characters in a text, to demonstrate student's comprehension, inferring and summarising skills. Alternatively it could be used early in a unit of study as a diagnostic tool designed to capture or expand on student's prior knowledge about a topic. In the example above the students have used a bubble map to capture words they would use to describe a nurse. This could be expanded further by allowing students to include short descriptive phrases.

The video below demonstrates the process of creating a bubble map in class. You will notice that the students start with a blank page, rather than a pre-printed template. This is one of the key differentiators between thinking-maps and traditional graphic organisers, as it doesn't imply an expectation of a certain pre-determined number or descriptors, nor does it limit the number of descriptors students can come up with.