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Language Arts Videos 106 videos
Picking a theme for a party is pretty easy—always go karate party, because they come with nunchuck egg rolls. Themes in writing are a little diff...
Calling a book “non-fiction” is a bit like saying you have a dog. Sure it covers the basics, but there's a big difference between a Doberman an...
ELA Drills, Advanced: Punctuation 4. Which of the words is spelled correctly?
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.
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.
Full Transcript
- 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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