Figure 1

How to build
Rules of Mind Mapping
Mind Mapping® has a specific design that is guided
by a simple set of principles. As my first article in

a Mind Map®
The first article in this series explained
Mind Mapping’s unique features and
why they matter. In his second feature,
Barry Mapp shows you how to
construct a Mind Map
issue 12 of TEX demonstrated, it is these principles
that differentiate Mind Mapping from other visual
association tools, such as spider diagrams. The very
features that make it such an effective technique for
rapid learning also make it outstanding as a tool for
promoting clarity of thought and communication.
To get the best out of Mind Mapping, it should be
taught in an understanding and consistent way.
Because the architecture of the map is crucial to
its effectiveness, it is important that anyone who
takes on the role of teaching Mind Mapping has
fully integrated its operational design into their
everyday practice. We would not expect to be
taught French by a person who can’t speak any
French and the same principle holds true for Mind
Mapping. Students will learn about the principles
and benefits of Mind Mapping not through being

14 www.teachingexpertise.com ● Issue 13 ● September 2006


told about them, but through teachers consis-
tently encouraging and role-modelling the use of
Mind Mapping in the classroom.
The laws of Mind Mapping
Use a blank sheet of paper in landscape format.
Start in the centre and always create a central icon
to represent the topic. Make this unique and let it
standout from the page (use colour, dimension,
imagery, humour)
The image is left open and not enclosed by a
frame (unless the frame is part of the topic).
As a guide, the size of the central icon should
take up around 10% of the sheet.
The main themes
The main themes that you create around the topic
are like the chapter headings of a book and are
supported by thick and curvy lines (like main
branches of a tree). These branches connect
directly to the central image. Choose single words,
written in upper case, placed on a line of the same
length as the word. Pictures or symbols can always
replace words here.
Secondary and tertiary levels of thought
Start to add secondary levels of thought to the main
branches and then, if necessary, third and fourth
levels of thought. Lines become progressively
thinner as you near the edge of the map. All of the
above rules still apply, except that you can now write
your words in lower case as well as upper case.
Pictures or symbols can still always replace words.
You can enhance the map using colour, symbols,
depth, artistry and humour. You can also use thin
lines with arrowheads to show how information is
connected on adjacent or nearby branches.
In addition, there is no specific rule about the
numbers of branches on a Mind Map. I always
suggest to my students that the number of main
branches should be ideally be between three and
nine (ie six plus or minus three). To avoid clutter
and to focus the mind on ‘chunking down’, I
recommend that where sub-branches are
concerned, these should be kept to five or less. (If
you have six thoughts radiating from a keyword,
are you able to further subdivide these thoughts
into two groups of three, or one four and one two?)
To read a Mind Map, you should not have to turn
the paper. So when you create a map always bend
and angle the branches, so that the words are
readable horizontally.
Although you may Mind Map the same topic and
follow the same rules as other students, your map
will always be unique and a reflection of your own
personality and preferences. The more you
personalise your map, the easier it is for you to
remember it.
www.teachingexpertise.com ● Issue 13 ● September 2006
Learning
Figure 2
The Mind Map is an abstraction of your reality.
So abstractions on the Mind Map run from the
(centre) highest level of abstraction to (periphery)
lower levels of abstraction.
Everything on the Mind Map has relevance for
you because everything connects back to the topic.
Ease your students into Mind Maps
Before I ask students to have a go at constructing
their first Mind Maps, I like to ease them into the
technique by getting them to read some Mind
Maps to each other and then to copy at least one
of these maps that model the map’s principles.
If you are new to Mind Mapping, read the How
and Holiday Mind Maps (figures 1 and 2) and reflect
upon how much information you can glean from
each map. There are some tips to help you to ‘read’
a Mind Map in my previous article in Issue 12 of TEX.
Bear in mind that some parts of any Mind Map Students see lists
maybe difficult for the individual reader to
and bullet points
‘decode’ (for a variety of reasons) but this does not
particularly matter, and it is actually beneficial everyday at school
that some parts remain ambiguous, as it helps the and college, so
reader to see where more data is required, as well
they are
as helping them to formulate some good ques-
tions. In what parts of the map in figure 2 do you encouraged to use
require more data?
them. Students
Copying Mind Maps need to see Mind
Next is the copying stage. This stage helps the Maps in everyday
beginner to get the ‘feel’ of the technique and
use if they are to
often shows up copying errors, such as writing
words at the ends of branches rather than on the be convinced of
branches themselves and drawing elongated their importance
branches that support tiny writing (as opposed to
sizing each keyword to fill the whole branch). This
as a serious
exercise is also an opportunity to point out some learning tool
15
Learning

of the less obvious features of the Mind Map and All about Jim
to identify and help those who are having some
general difficulty with the process.
Sit down with a plain sheet of paper on your
desk and copy this same Mind Map, slowly and
carefully, to get a ‘feel’ for the technique. I recom-
mend that you copy initially without adding any
colour. When your copy is complete, just colour
in one of the branching sections to start with.
Figure 3
This will allow you to notice the power of adding
colour to maps, and how the colour makes a topic
section of the map ‘stand out’ from the rest. This
demonstrates the power and purpose of colour –
to make each grouping on the map stand out. We
all notice features that standout from the back-
ground, we all ‘forget’ features that merge into
the background!
By the way, if you find this copying difficult, start
by tracing the Mind Map. Quite often what we
draw initially is actually very different from what
Figure 4
we are copying. Be aware of this phenomenon.
Betty Edwards1, in her book Drawing on the Right
Side of the Brain, suggests that the reason we are
often poor copiers is because we try to copy on the
‘left-side of our brain’. When we do this, we copy
not what we see in front of us but a symbolic
version of what we see, filtered through prior
habits, beliefs and pre-conceptions (so trace a
Mind Map first, if you think your left brain may
deceive you!).
Once you are happy with your copying, then
move on to the construction phase of the map.
Figure 5

Constructing Mind Maps

To practise the technique, you first need a topic. I
usually suggest that students start with something
straightforward, where the topic is about them, their
interests or about a recent or planned holiday. Each
of these topics is one where they will already have
a good body of knowledge about the subject and
where there is unlikely to be a lack of initial ideas.
Let’s follow a very mature student, Jim, who is
about to create his first Mind Map. Jim is the
eldest of five children. He has been married to
Figure 6a
Susan for 35 years and they have two children
and two grandchildren. He is well-educated, with
We would not a background in science and medicine but,
following a recent redundancy, he has set up and
expect to be
runs his own small consultancy business. He was
taught French by a very sporty in his youth and still maintains a
person who can’t good degree of health and fitness. He will be 60
next year and is looking forward to a big party
speak any French and a special holiday. He still has some out-
and the same standing ambitions.
Now, if Jim was going to write an essay (or bullet
principle holds
point notes) about his life and interests, he might
true for Mind start with his family and relationships, move on to
Figure 6b
Mapping his education and then outlines his previous and

16 www.teachingexpertise.com ● Issue 13 ● September 2006


current jobs and so on. The disadvantage of writing
in this (traditional) way is that he has to think about
and recall all his important relationship issues
before moving on to the next ‘topic’ of his educa-
tion and to complete that before moving on to his
past jobs etc. He thus needs to complete things
before moving on to the next area (otherwise things
will be missed out) – a process that considerably
slows down his writing, reduces his productivity
and dampens his spontaneity.
This way of working is a reductive approach
rather than one that creates a ‘synthesis’. With
Mind Mapping, ‘synthesis’ is easy. Jim arranges his
blank paper in landscape format and writes the
topic ‘Jim’ in the centre of the page. He thinks briefly
about some of his main topic headings and imme-
diately adds four main branch headings to the
map (because these headings immediately spring
into his mind): family, education, work and sport
(Figure 3) he will think of further headings and add
these later. (Remember thoughts actually arrive at
random, so the map acts as a ‘thought catcher’).
Jim allows the map to catch his thoughts as they
arise, rather than trying to force thoughts in a
particular order. This saves him time and keeps
the writing in ‘flow’. He works with his ‘butterfly
mind’ rather than against it. So, in creating his
map, he actually flits back and forth between
branches, adding afterthoughts as they arise and
adding extra ‘twigs’ or new main branches. Notice
how Jim has initially worked around the ‘Work’
branch – perhaps needing more time to chunk this
down, or perhaps this is a bit of a ‘block’ for him
(due to his recent redundancy). However, the fact
that he may have a thinking or writing block, does
not stop him from continuing to work on other
parts of the map.
By the time he reaches the stage shown in
Figure 5, he has more or less completed his map
apart from the ‘work’ branch. He is encouraged not
to focus on this (‘the problem’) but instead focus
his conscious mind on something else (in this case
adding colour to map 6a) allowing his subcon-
scious mind to continue to explore the work issue
in the background. He also adds a few extra
doodles to the map at this time. Finally (6b) he is
able to add some branches and keywords that
summarise his ‘work’.
As Jim is finding out, Mind Mapping is a tech-
nique that allows him to work in either a linear or
a non-linear way, and to have multiple thought
streams open simultaneously. Non-linear thinking
and thought multi-tasking are faster methods
than serial, bit-by-bit thinking.
Here, Jim has taken to the technique like a duck
to water, but he has always been frustrated by tradi-
tional ways of working. Be aware, though, that
many mature students are actually initially frus-
www.teachingexpertise.com ● Issue 13 ● September 2006
Learning
trated by Mind Mapping because the traditional
way has worked reasonably well for them and they
find this different way of working difficult and
uncomfortable. In general, the younger the student,
the less set in their ways they are and the quicker
they take to the technique.
Choose your topic
So now it’s your turn. Choose your topic and give
yourself a good 10 minutes to sit quietly and
construct your first Mind Map. When you have
completed the task, think about how easy or difficult
it was, and how you could do it better next time.
Compare your finished design structure to the ones
you have read and copied. Are you managing to
adhere to the design rules? Probably the trickiest part
is in selecting keywords and the discipline of keeping
to just one word on a branch. This becomes easier
with practise.
Creating one Mind Map is just a start. In school,
I believe it is the teacher’s responsibility to create
the opportunity for students to use the technique
regularly and consistently in classroom situations.
Some of the ways in which this can be achieved
will be discussed in the next issue. We can always
give our students some assignments as Mind
Maps rather than essays.
Reference
As a final note, Gregory Bateson and others have 1. Drawing on the Right
suggested that abstraction and categorisation are Side of the Brain, Betty
Edwards, New York:
essential to ‘sense making’. If this is the case, then
Tarcher/Putnam,1989
Mind Mapping actually helps the user to make
sense of information. It is probably this predisposi-
tion to help make ‘sense’ (rather than its suggested
ability to utilise the ‘whole brain’) that makes it
such a powerful accelerated learning tool.
When taught and used correctly and appropri-
ately, Mind Mapping works well with students of
all learning styles and all learning abilities. Age is
no barrier. I have taught Mind Mapping to students
of seven to 70 years of age. However, as this article
has outlined, the way in which the technique is
taught, and how well the teacher understands and Barry Mapp trained with
Tony Buzan in Mental
models the technique, is crucial to student uptake
Literacy and Mind
and benefit. Students see lists and bullet points Mapping and runs his
everyday at school and college, so they are encour- own courses in schools,
colleges and business.
aged to use them. Students need to see Mind Maps
He is a visiting Lecturer
in everyday use if they are to be convinced of their at Birmingham
importance as a serious learning tool. So give your University and Morley
College and a
students a good Mind Mapping environment and, consultant for Dudley
after a couple of months of regular use in the Regional Staff College,
classroom, see how their clarity of thought and where he runs modular
workshops for teachers
communication improves and how they then and trainers on Mind
choose to manage information – bullet points or Mapping and thinking
skills. Barry has worked
Mind Maps. Notice as well what happens to their
with primary schools
test scores! integrating the Mind
In my next article, I will show you how to use Map technique across
the whole school.
Mind Mapping before, during and after your
Tex@BarryMapp.co.uk
teaching sessions. TEX
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