Heart Maps® are tools that allow you to explore through writing and drawing what you’ve stored in your heart. They’re also also a doorway into writing.

Free Heart Map

Join my email list and you’ll receive a FREE Heart Map Template to use in your home or classroom.

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Printable Heart Maps

Browse the growing collection of printable Heart Maps created by Georgia Heard.

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The Book

Heart Maps: Helping Students Create and Craft Authentic Writing

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How to Make a Heart Map

Step-by-step instructions along with tips and tricks for creating a Heart Map

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Watch: How to Make a Heart Map

Heart Mapping at Home

TEDx Talk

Heart Maps Interview

How do we get students to “ache with caring” about their writing instead of mechanically stringing words together? Listen to my suggestions (and download sample chapters of my book)

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Reviews

  • "Heart Maps is a book that I will use and recommend to teachers for years to come."

    Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer

  • "You'll find yourself relying on this book again and again as a trusted source as you help your student writers craft a writing life."

    Jennifer Serravallo, author of The Reading Strategies Book and The Writing Strategies Book

  • “We understand that children read and write more earnestly and truthfully when engaged by emotion. We have, in Heart Maps, a stunning array of potential discoveries for young readers and writers: discoveries about what really lies within our complex emotional lives; about the budding passion they find in the social or natural world; and about the hearts of those around them. The discoveries and insights children will make as they craft heart maps will be lasting and profound.”

    Ellin Keene, author of Talk About Understanding; coeditor of The Teacher You Want to Be

  • “From the first page of Heart Maps, Georgia takes us on a journey of possible from a child s-eye-view with 20 heart maps as our navigation tool. She helps us envision writing from the inside out, taking us on a passionate voyage unfettered by impersonal rules where joyful meanderings of powerful, personal, purposeful writing keep possible in view.”

    Dr. Mary Howard, author of Good to Great Teaching and RTI from All Sides

  • “Heart Maps is filled with wonder and beauty. It will capture and hold the why of any writer s journey: to name the passions that live inside of us, waiting to be written. Georgia offers wise guidance and practical tools for writing teachers of all ages, including 20 kinds of heart maps and dozens and dozens of mentor poems and gorgeous student examples to spring deep thinking across genres. This is a rich and lasting gift for my own teaching and an essential book for all who lead writers.”

    Penny Kittle, author of Book Love and Write Beside Them

  • “Heart Maps shows and powerfully provides a tangible way for a teacher to help a child plumb their natural creativity. The heart map method is also a bridge: by using and being open to it, a solid connection between the teacher and student is inevitable. Even more, by practicing heart maps, a child can learn to connect with their own vast and unique identity as a writer-for-life. There may be no greater gift a teacher can give.”

    John Fox, author of Finding What You Didn t Lose: Expressing Your Truth and Creativity Through Poem-Making; founder of The Institute for Poetic Medicine