Teaching science in middle school is both rewarding and demanding. Creating an exciting learning environment with a rich science curriculum that engages all students is challenging enough. Monitoring the progress of as many as 150 individual students and knowing that they understand the science concepts we are teaching can be overwhelming. How can teachers know if students develop a coherent and scientific understanding of the important concepts? Is it possible to produce a snapshot of this understanding? In this article the authors address these questions by sharing some practical tips for using concept maps as a way to monitor students understanding.