We use affinity mapping to cluster our students' curiosities to identify patterns in their thinking.
strategy
We used affinity mapping to group (cluster) my students' curiosities about the world. This strategy helped us to identify five themes that the class is curious about. The students named the themes with my guidance.
experience
The students wrote their curiosities on individual post-it notes and I asked them to write at least 3 each. Then we put all the post-it notes on one table and started finding which ones were similar to each other. After that we started naming themes like Ocean, Architecture, Computer Games.
learning
_surprises/delights/wondering_
The students were surprised that I was curious about what they are curious about and it took time for them to write their curiosities. Once they got going, the questions got more interesting. They were excited to see that other people in the class shared their curiosities. I was surprised that it might lead to different students becoming friends.
related
patterning
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