Mind mapping is a technique frequently used to bring up old ideas, associate ideas with each other, and organize thoughts by summarizing. Visual students frequently benefit from them. Today, my Latin four students ended a unit by using Popplet.com (which is free up to five mind maps!) to create medical mind maps. They chose from five separate topics: humors, cures, illnesses, viscera and parts afflicted. They added major subsets coming off the sides of the main topic.
Then, they got up and moved to the next computer, where they clicked on the little speech bubble above various major subsets and made comments, in complete sentences, that pertained. For example: cholera flavum colore est. cholera in stomacho fit. melancholia homines lassitudine afficit.
They were given five minutes at each computer to comment on as many things as they could. They circled around the room, so every student visited every computer. You can also draw in the boxes, so students illustrated various diseases and remedies.
Once they were finished, I asked the groups to color-code their topics appropriately (inside the body and outside, plants vs. animals, etc), if necessary. Then, they posted them to a common forum, where they became their test study guide.
I have done this at the lower levels as well: character maps, topic maps, story webs, vocab webs, etc. You could ask them to write sentences with pertinent vocab, or there wouldn't have to be, necessarily, even independent production from the students - pertinent lines could be extracted from texts. Students could go around adding major topics to each others' webs and then have to include a certain number of comments, etc. The webs can be exported as PDFs, or they can be shared as links or on social media, and they can be embedded on websites.
Update: I have also used this as a test using this template:
The story was Mercurius et Apollo, so that was in the center. They chose the three most important facts according to their understanding; they selected two major characters and gave a description as well as a quote that supported that; they identified the major problem in the story + a quote; the setting of the story + a quote; and how the problem was solved + a quote. We did this at the Latin I level, and though it's certainly simplistic, they were capable of it, and I was impressed with their work.
All in all, the feeling has been that it is useful in collating information and asking them to recall various ideas, as well as adding their own thoughts and assessments.
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