Teacher Wang Cheng-Chung Director of Guidance at Shuangwen Junior High School in Nantou County, Taiwan. He holds a Master's degree in Curriculum and Instruction from National Taichung University of Education and a Bachelor's degree in Chinese Literature from National Kaohsiung Normal University. He is the only teacher in Taiwan to have won the Triple Crown of "Teacher of the Year," "Super Teacher," and "Power Teacher" awards. Twenty years ago, he transformed learning for students in remote areas through administrative strategies, and in recent years, he has focused on revolutionizing Chinese language teaching in the classroom, creating the MAPS teaching method and initiating Taiwan's "Nth Power of Dreams" national teacher professional development workshops.
Source: Parenting Magazine Wang Cheng-Chung's Column
What is the MAPS Teaching Method?
The Four Core Elements of the MAPS Teaching Method
The
MAPS Teaching Method, created by Teacher Wang Cheng-Chung, consists of four elements:
M: Mind Mapping
Mind mapping in MAPS teaching is an important tool to help students construct a reader's perspective. Teacher Wang Cheng-Chung hopes that through this tool, children can have a better scaffold to demonstrate their emergent reading comprehension abilities and clearly visualize their thoughts through drawing. This helps students develop clearer logic. Through question designs with different functional orientations, students are guided to complete mind maps (I see/I feel/I think) through small group collaborative learning and self-study in class.
A: Asking Questions
Teachers can design layered questions based on the text. Through the process of asking and answering questions in class, students can create an environment full of critical thinking for their learning, cultivating and nurturing their reading literacy.
P: Presentation
Provides a stage for children to showcase their abilities, offering them opportunities and experiences of success. By having students from each group present their mind maps on stage, teachers can understand students' learning status and determine if more assistance and supplementary instruction can be provided.
S: Scaffolding Instruction (Peer Scaffolding)
Teacher Wang Cheng-Chung believes that in regular elementary and middle school classes, there are significant disparities in individual students' learning readiness and motivation. Therefore, cooperative learning through small groups can be employed, including using points or selection, or through more interactive methods, to increase student learning motivation.
Teacher Wang Cheng-Chung explains the concepts of these four elements: Mind Mapping is a good way to organize information; Asking Questions, in his own reading experience, the process of self-questioning and self-answering proved to be the best learning path for him; Presentation confirms that after students have learned, they can articulate it clearly, indicating true understanding; Scaffolding, through mutual collaborative learning and self-study, in small groups, achieves effective learning.
"MAPS is designed for children with low starting points, low motivation, and low abilities. It's designed for classes with large, typical disparities. The biggest difference between it and teaching methods suitable for high-achieving students in urban areas is: we need to 'bring them from not knowing to knowing; from not wanting to wanting.' But our goal, like other teaching methods, is to help students go from good to better."
How does HiTeach support the MAPS teaching method?
The TEAM Model Smart Education Support System, with
HiTeach as its core, is designed to serve frontline teachers, aiming to make teaching more convenient and achieve optimal teaching and learning outcomes through technological tools.
Practice of Mind Mapping & Presentation
The MAPS teaching method guides students to complete mind maps through small group collaborative learning and self-study in class, using question designs with different functional orientations. For relevant HiTeach features, please refer to the link below:
In actual cases of adopting the HiTeach system for teaching, there is also a school that implements the mind map teaching method across the entire school and all subjects.
This is Baoji High-tech No. 3 Primary School in Shaanxi Province (For more content, please see "Observation and Research Record of Smart Classrooms with Mind Education at Baoji High-tech No. 3 Primary School") You can see students using mind maps to organize and draw their logical thinking. With the convenient TEAM Model support system, students' images are projected onto the screen for the entire class to clearly see and discuss more effectively.
Using a group cooperative learning model, groups exchange their drawn subject mind maps, learning from each other's strengths and weaknesses to refine their own work.
Sharing: Groups select the best work, take a photo, and upload it (via "Fly Screen") to the screen. The teacher then pushes students' work back to the group tablets, allowing each group to share other groups' work and be inspired by their ideas.
Selection: Students use IRS (Interactive Response System) clickers to vote for the best mind map work.
Explanation: The best work is displayed and explained. Students in the group engage in inter-group interaction and whole-class instruction through reading aloud, content supplementation, viewpoint refutation, challenging questions, reasonable suggestions, and teacher explanations.
Through technology, student work that was previously difficult to share can be easily transferred among students and teachers. Features like voting and "Fly Screen" make the classroom more lively, instantly showing students' feedback and thoughts. Teachers can also use the "Pick Random Student" feature to select individuals from each group, creating a fairer environment where everyone has a chance to be chosen for presentation, truly realizing the goal of focusing on every child.
In addition, Professor Jiang Ximei also shared valuable reading teaching strategies, hoping to assist classrooms that have adopted HiTeach Smart Classrooms in creating more valuable and effective technology-innovative teaching models. Please refer to the paper "
Eight Reading Teaching Strategies Using TEAM Model Smart Classrooms"
Models for reading instruction using HiTeach Smart Classrooms:
- Strategy 1: State the main idea of the article → Answer questions
- Strategy 2: Write keywords for each paragraph → Group mind mapping → Discussion → Voting
- Strategy 3: Write keywords → Mind mapping → Extract main points → Write short essays → Diagnose work
- Strategy 4: Prompt with the Eight Ws → Mind mapping → Collaborative discussion → Revision → Presentation → Write essays
- Strategy 5: Write keywords → Mind mapping → Write book reviews → Collaborative refinement → Two-way item checklist
- Strategy 6: Write keywords → Mind mapping → Creative story writing → Illustrate → Bind mini-books
- Strategy 7: Write keywords → Mind mapping → Extract key points from mind map → Write as evidence/examples
- Strategy 8: Each group reads different texts → Ask questions → Mind mapping → Rewrite → Share reflections
Practice of Asking Questions
Questioning strategies are a crucial part of teaching. Good questions can guide children to think more, and through group discussions and presentations, peers can stimulate each other's ideas.
However, in the past, teachers often couldn't grasp the entire class's situation when asking questions. They would often take feedback from the most vocal students as feedback from the whole class, or pay special attention to quieter students. Often, the large group of silent students in the middle would be overlooked.
At this point, HiTeach's tools can help teachers make data-driven decisions and ask effective questions!
IRS Instant Q&A for Data-Driven Decisions 
The IRS instant feedback system allows for real-time feedback not only through IRS clickers but also via mobile phones and tablets. The image shows Professor Chen Hsin-Hsi conducting real-time feedback for a lecture with 200 participants, immediately generating charts for analysis to understand all response statuses. In fact, applying the concept of TEAM Model-Based Smarter Learning (TBSL) also encompasses a fully similar idea: effectively utilizing Team-Based Learning (TBL) and leveraging data channels with one-to-one (e-schoolbag) learning. This integrates the advantages of group learning (TBL) and self-directed learning (one-to-one), seamlessly connecting pre-class, in-class, and post-class activities. Smart decision-making makes the classroom more efficient and intelligent.
Please see "TEAM Model Based Smarter Learning (TBSL)" 
Integration Levels of TEAM Model Based Smarter LearningPractice of Scaffolding Instruction (Peer Scaffolding)
The peer scaffolding in the MAPS teaching method adopts a heterogeneous grouping cooperative learning model, allowing students with low to medium learning achievements to receive timely assistance from students with medium to high learning achievements within their group. At the same time, it promotes more efficient learning for high-achieving students through a "teaching others" learning model. This is an excellent model, confirmed by many experts and scholars to genuinely help students improve their thinking. Furthermore, through technology and systems, we can make the cooperative learning model even more efficient.
In a HiTeach TBL Smart Classroom, students use an IRS (Interactive Response System) clicker for learning and feedback (Web IRS on tablets is also possible), and use group tablets as a collective feedback device for team collaboration. Team-Based Learning (TBL)
Utilizing Smart Push for Differentiated Instruction Teachers can use color labels to mark pages according to teaching needs for easy review after class. The smart push function supports color labels, allowing teachers to select different teaching material pages to push to different students based on group, enabling differentiated instruction. This precisely enhances the learning effectiveness of every child.
Fly Screen Receive: Student Expression Teachers can receive text messages feedback from students and display them uniformly on the screen for explanation, making discussions more focused.
Work Observation: See the Differences Teachers can take photos and send them back to the screen (computer), or ask students to send photos to the teacher, and directly observe the works.
Through a more diverse teaching system and functions, we fully support the implementation and practice of the MAPS teaching method.
Broaden focus, individual mastery: Teachers expand their scope of attention to students through data channels and use data to grasp individual student learning situations.
Example of TBL Team-Based Learning Classroom Seating Arrangement
Through a more diverse teaching system and functions, we fully support the implementation and practice of the MAPS teaching method.
We deeply admire teachers like Wang Cheng-Chung for their dedication to education, exemplified by his creation of the MAPS teaching method and the initiation of the "Nth Power of Dreams" national teacher professional development workshops.
The promotion of teaching methods and teacher communities undeniably helps the teaching frontline and is highly praised and implemented by numerous educational institutions. The philosophy of Habook Smart Education is to be guided by the Smarter Learning Cycle (TBSL) concept, training teachers to distill effective smart models, and develop smarter classrooms. With the vision of "empowering every child," we aim to realize the ideal of student-centered, one-to-one smart education. Habook can perfectly support and implement any educational philosophy.
References and Further Reading
Wang Cheng-Chung: The Four Core Elements of the MAPS Teaching Method Observation and Research Record of Smart Classrooms with Mind Education at Baoji High-tech No. 3 Primary School TEAM Model Based Smarter Learning(TBSL) The model of TEAM Model Team-based Learning: Vision and Practice 
