Earth Science Thinking Maps

by Long Beach Unified School District

For each type of map below, construct maps from two topics,

for a total of six maps.

Bubble Map

  • Earth
  • Plates
  • Energy
  • Waves
  • Pangaea
  • Pangaea Evidence
  • Plate Tectonics
  • Earth’s Magnetic Field
  • Stress

DoubleBubble Map

  • Inner‐outer core
  • Oceanic‐continental crust
  • Potential‐kinetic energy
  • conduction‐convection‐radiation
  • sea‐floor spreading‐continental drift
  • hypothesis‐theory
  • hanging wall‐footwall
  • divergent‐convergent‐transform

Tree Map

  • Plate Boundaries
  • Energy Types
  • Stress
  • Crust
  • Pangaea Evidence
  • Heat transfer
  • Rock Types
  • Landforms
  • Energy Conversions

General Science Thinking Maps Ideas 2012

bySawgrass Bay Elementary

Brace Map

  • Parts of organisms that help them survive
  • Communities, populations, species, parts in a particular ecosystem
  • Layers of soil
  • Parts of ecosystem
  • Parts of plants
  • Parts of soil
  • Relating factor “is a living thing found in a…”
  • Relating factor “is a nonliving thing found in a…”

Bridge map

  • “Plants hold soil in place” like “____ hold ____”
  • Showing adaptations and purpose (relating factor: is needed for survival because…, or needs ____ to survive
  • Showing organism/habitat need relationship
  • Showing predator/prey relationships
  • Relating factor “gets its food by…” using specific plants and animals
  • Relating factor “is needed for” or “without ____ we _____”
  • Relating factor “needs this to survive”

Bubble Map

  • Each planet
  • The Sun

Circle Map

  • Defining adaptation, niche, habitat, ecosystem, producers, consumers, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores
  • Defining weathering, erosion, deposition
  • Describing living things
  • For each planet
  • For inexhaustible resources
  • For nonrenewable resources
  • For renewable resources
  • For the sun
  • A living thing in the middle and its habitat needs in the outer circle
  • characteristics of sedimentary rocks
  • With organism in the middle and description of its roles in the niche in the outer circle

Double Bubble comparing/contrasting

  • Minerals and rocks
  • Weathering and erosion, weathering and deposition, deposition and erosion
  • Different soils
  • Earth and another planet
  • Plants and animals
  • Erosion, weathering
  • Renewable and nonrenewable, nonrenewable and inexhaustible, etc.
  • Types of rocks to sedimentary rocks

Flow Map

  • Showing food chain (remember arrow shows flow of energy and points to the organism that RECEIVES the energy)
  • Show different processes to make sedimentary rocks
  • Formation of fossil fuels
  • Formation of minerals
  • Life cycle of plants

Multi-Flow Map showing

  • The cause and effect relationships of changes organisms make when faced by changes in habitats
  • What happens when organisms compete for resources
  • Cause/effect relationships of forces on landforms

Tree Map with

  • Forces as major categories and what results from those forces
  • Kinds of ecosystems and characteristics
  • Types of energy and examples of uses of each
  • Types of natural resources and uses of each
  • Types of resources and examples of each