As the Danville Independent School District rolled out Thinking Maps during the 2024-2025 school year and will continue to implement them going forward, teachers are reflecting on the impact they’ve had on instruction.

First-Grade Teacher Jennifer Westerfield grew up in a Thinking Maps district in Arizona and shared the transformative power they’ve had in her own classroom.

“I had a passion for writing and sharing my ideas, but I really struggled with organizing my thoughts,” she said about her first-hand experience as a student, when her school implemented Thinking Maps when she was in fifth grade. “Thinking Maps provided me with ways to brainstorm, take notes, think outside the box, and expand my vocabulary.”

She described Thinking Maps as a “gamechanger” with her first graders, and “much deeper” than “just ‘fancier’ graphic organizers.”

“Our goal was to also provide students with a more consistent, meaningful structure for writing, and TMs definitely provided that,” she said. “I have seen a massive improvement in student writing simply because they understand the components needed for various kinds of writing. Students first learned how to speak from their maps and later learned how to transfer their ideas into a written paragraph. I've also noticed a drastic improvement in my classroom participation. TMs allowed my class to collaborate with peers, brainstorm, make connections to experiences they've had, and so much more.”

 

Fourth-Grade Teacher Angel Davis has also seen students “use Thinking Maps in ways that help them organize and deepen their understanding of different concepts.”

Starting with simpler Thinking Maps, the class worked their way up to more advanced maps, like the Double Bubble Map.

Davis models the maps to support learning by emphasizing repetition so students become more comfortable with them and also encourages them “to relate the maps to real-life content, like science topics they find interesting.”

“I’ve seen tremendous growth in my students' ability to organize complex science ideas and clearly explain cause-and-effect relationships,” she said. “During our unit on waves and tsunamis, students began by using a Double Bubble Map to compare tsunami waves and regular ocean waves, using a video and their prior knowledge. As we dug deeper, students read ‘Disaster Zones’ from our ‘Rock Stories’ book and explored a digital tsunami simulator, where they could adjust wind speed and earthquake strength to observe how different forces affect wave behavior.”

Then, the students created Multi-Flow Thinking Maps to identify causes and effects of tsunamis.

“This helped them become more thoughtful about using evidence and strengthened their research habits,” she said. “Through this process, students were able to clearly explain how several different Earth forces — such as underwater earthquakes, landslides, and volcanic eruptions — can lead to a tsunami. Their ability to connect information from multiple sources, visualize it through the map, and explain their thinking has really grown. It’s been exciting to see their confidence and curiosity increase throughout this hands-on, engaging unit.”

Davis said one major advantage of Thinking Maps is that they help her better understand how students process information, and since they make student thinking visible, she can gain insight into gaps in understanding early on.

“They’ve also helped me structure lessons more clearly and differentiate instruction,” she said. “For instance, I can offer different map types depending on student needs or the complexity of the content.”

 

Fourth-Grade Teacher Tania Busto said once she started tying Thinking Maps together with reading standards, she saw students easily making connections between the verb in each standard and the purpose of each map.

“Whenever I introduced a new standard, it was their job to figure out which map we should use,” she said. “I found there was a significant improvement in their understanding of the standards and how to apply them to our daily work. During Teacher Appreciation Week, I even received several cards with Thinking Maps about me, and I thought that was just the best!”

 

At the high school level, though English Teacher Laurie Pierce’s implementation of Thinking Maps is quite new, she’s already seen a difference in instruction.

For example, her final unit of the year in English 1 is narrative writing, and students used Thinking Maps to plan their personal narratives.

“They used Circle Maps to brainstorm ideas for their narratives, Flow Maps to chart out main events in the narrative, and Tree Maps to list details, descriptions, and dialogue associated with each event,” she said.

After completing the planning process, they wrote their narratives from the maps they created.

“What I've liked best about the maps is that they've helped me break the writing process down into chunks that feel more manageable for the students,” Pierce said. “I also like the fact that the maps reduce the screen time involved in the writing process and give students the opportunity for a more tactile experience that can incorporate visual as well as written creativity.”

In navigating the newness of Thinking Maps at DHS and planning for the future at the school, Principal Danny Goodwin said they’ve been helpful to use with staff, not just students.

“As a means of learning by doing, we utilized a Circle Map to collect descriptors of an effective classroom at DHS,” he said. “We took that information and had each department reorganize them into a Tree Map to categorize the key elements that we will use as look-fors, moving forward.”

Superintendent Ron Ballard uses Thinking Maps a lot, himself.

"Thinking Maps give leaders a shared visual language to clarify complex ideas, align priorities, and drive strategic action, turning conversations into solutions,” Ballard said.