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ELA 5: Protagonist vs. Antagonist 245 Views


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Description:

Most people think Peter Pan was the protagonist, but all we see is a young boy who kidnaps a whole bunch of kids and terrorizes an old one-handed man. Peter Pantagonist, more like.

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Transcript

00:13

You know those days where your thoughts are all just a giant jumble of kitties and popcorn

00:17

and irritating songs playing on repeat?

00:20

Seriously, we've had the new Bieber song in our heads for months. Send help.

00:24

Anyway…sure, it can get a little confusing, but there is a way to navigate through all

00:28

that… and guess what? It actually looks cool.

00:31

Mind maps are a visual way of organizing ideas about a topic.

00:35

And they’re pretty useful for school, too.

00:37

Sometimes––or…maybe a lot of the time–

00:39

–you’ll have lots of different ideas about a topic.

00:42

With the mind map, we can organize these different ideas into a more manageable form.

00:46

We can even use subcategories, which are probably going to become your new favorite things.

00:50

And all of this in turn can help lead to thinking about a topic in a new, organized way!

00:56

Mind maps are also a great tool for meta-cognition…

00:58

… which is just a fancy word that means “thinking about thinking.”

01:02

Like you’re doing right now.

01:03

Oooh….it's like we're inside of your brain…

01:06

…Wow. You think a lot about pizza.

01:08

Anyway. Let's hit pause on the whole "pizza" thing and try an example.

01:11

Step 1 – Blank sheet of paper. Bam! Already nailing it.

01:15

Step 2 - Put your main topic – or what you want to brainstorm about - in a circle in

01:20

the middle of the map.

01:21

Let’s say the main topic for our essay is going to be “cats”. So we write it down.

01:25

Clawsome.

01:26

Now we let our minds run wild and think about things related to cats…

01:30

… let’s see… there’s cats in the wild…

01:32

… cats as pets…

01:34

… cat food…

01:35

… cat litter…

01:36

… Cats the musical…

01:37

Ever heard the phrase “no wrong answers”? That really applies here.

01:40

Anything related to the main topic that you draw in your map is going to be useful.

01:44

If, after this initial brainstorming, you’re still uncertain as to what you want to write

01:49

about, you can divide some of your ideas into subcategories.

01:52

Remember? Your new favorite things? Raindrops on roses and subcategories on mind maps.

01:57

So for instance, with “Cats as pets.”

02:00

There’s famous cats…

02:01

There’s cats being revered in Ancient Egypt…

02:04

There's your doofy cat stepping on your face at seven AM and waking you up…

02:08

And so on and so forth.

02:09

Once you’re done brainstorming, look at your whole map, and look for connections that

02:13

might be the basis of an essay you’d enjoy writing.

02:15

For example, maybe you want to write an essay comparing how cats were revered in Ancient

02:19

Egypt to how they’re viewed today.

02:21

And there you go. All it took was a mind map to get from a bunch of random ideas to a well-thought

02:26

out essay.

02:27

Just keep it away from Mr. Fluffers.

02:29

This is why we can’t have nice things…

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