Imagine you have been set the following essay: "Discuss the effects of child poverty on educational attainment in the UK."

Look at the mind map below:

A mind map diagram. The boxes linked to the central theme of child poverty contain information about different aspects of the topic.

The student has used different colours for different parts of their mind map:

Orange for the main topic
Different colours for different sub topics
White boxes for sources of evidence

The mind map above was created using mural. There are many tools available, or you can use shapes in Microsoft Word, or just pens and paper!

Reflect

Thinking back to what you learned about decoding essay questions, do you think this mind map plan will be effective in helping the student answer the question? Why/why not?