Metacognitive Tools for Learning: Concept Maps and Vee Diagrams

  The use of concept maps is encouraged with the students. The benefit of this and another metacognitive tool, Vee Diagrams is to organize students' research. Metacognition is thinking about thinking and monitoring one's self-understanding with a topic. Students are taught how to construct concept maps and vee diagrams. These two tools are used when planning their case research, sharing their thoughts with others, and as visual representations of completed work. We briefly describe concept maps, vee diagrams, and their associated terms as they are defined and used in our Explorers of the Universe Project.