Difficult Concepts and Vocabulary

For students who have difficulty with higher level concepts, like personality traits, students can create Mind Map to show their understanding of new vocabulary.  These mind maps can include pictures and simple sentences/phrases to demonstrate a student's personal understanding of a word.  I would also ask the students to include synonyms and antonyms to increase their personal understanding of a vocabulary word. 

Here is an example Mind Map:

Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map#/media/File:Guru_Mindmap.jpg

Students would put "personality traits of a leader" in the middle, and branch out with their ideas of what they know or what they learn as they are reading the provided texts. Different colors can be used for different words and ideas as their mind maps build.