Martha Galea

McKinley's "Mind Mapping" program teaches students a new way of taking notes that improves recall, critical thinking, creativity, and organization. In Mind Mapping, students start their note-taking in the middle of a page, associating a central idea with a symbol or shape. Students then draw "branches" off of that central idea to convey details about the subject, and additional branches off of the sub-categories to "illustrate" their notes. This method of using words, pictures, and patterns to take notes teaches students to use both logical and imaginative thinking strategies and enables them to grasp concepts and remember important concepts better.