Kidspiration is a visual learning tool especially for K-3 students. Designed for emerging readers and writers, Kidspiration helps students develop confidence as they learn to organize information, understand concepts and connections, create stories, and express and share their thoughts. Integrated Picture and Writing views combine to enhance student's comprehension of concepts and information. In addition to the picture and writing views, Kidspiration also has an audio feature, allowing younger students to have text read aloud or to record their own words and sentences. Kidspiration comes with a variety of activities in all subject areas to get you started. Once you are comfortable with the program, the Teacher Menu enables you to save activities you have created for student use.
Research has shown that visual learning is one of the best methods for teaching thinking skills. Visual learning techniques — graphical ways of working with ideas and presenting information — teach students to clarify their thinking, and to process, organize and prioritize new information. Visual diagrams reveal patterns, interrelationships and interdependencies. They also stimulate creative thinking.
Kids will enjoy using Kidspiration's audio and graphic features to demonstrate their creative projects, and teachers can use templates to assist with lesson plan development.
Have fun!
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Graphic organizers are powerful tools that allow us to see what students are thinking and how they are processing information. Concept maps. Spider Webs. Venn diagrams. Cause and effect. Whatever you call them, whatever shape they're in, students love learning with them. Graphic organizers are powerful tools to visually depict the connections among ideas. The Web sites below will discuss visual learning and demonstrate the power of Kidspiration software, and how it can enhance your lesson plans as well as support your literacy objectives.
Visual Learning: Kidspiration & Inspiration
- Chain of Events
- Chain of Events is used to describe the stages of an event, the actions of character or the steps in a procedure.
- Clustering
- Clustering is a nonlinear activity that generates ideas, images and feelings around a stimulus word.
- Brainstorm Webbing
- This is one example of "clustering."
- Using Graphic Organizers to Construct Meaning
- An elementary school teacher's example.
- Character Development
- The Great Kopok Tree
- Pre-Writing
- A grade 1 example of pre-writing.
- The 5 W's
- PreWriting example
- The Very Busy Spider
- An example of a "story line."
- Thinking Skills
- Frogs and Toads
- Using Graphic Organizers to Construct Meaning
- A nice collection of instructionally viable templates for elementary and middle school classrooms (be sure and check out the teacher tools while you're here).
- Organizing Information with Software Tools
- Information on how to use Inspiration to promote good study skills middle school students.
- Graphic Organizers
- All kinds of graphic organizers with links both on and off the site to help you fill in the blank.
- Task Definition Strategies
- How do you know what your problem is? Well, sometimes the teacher tells you. But other times you have to figure it out or define it for yourself. Here is how.
- Grids
- Grids Organize Thinking for Decision-Making & choices.
- Graphic Organizer Generators
- These generators will allow you to make graphic organizers by filling out a simple form. Compare and contrast to Inspiration and Kidspiration software!
- Free BrainStormingTraining
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- Kidspiration in the Classroom
- This site is a must - please start here before moving on to the other Web sites.
- Kidspiration Examples
- Hints, tips, tricks and activities for Kidspiration can be found here.
- Hints, tips, tricks and activities for Kidspiration
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- A Kinder-Garden for Butterflies
- This K-3 WebQuest makes use of Kidspiration to help students design a diagram of their very own butterfly garden. You will also find a rubric for assessing this project too.
- Visual Learning with Kidspiration and Inspiration
- The Osewgo, New York Schools offer this extensive collection of lessons and template samples for both Inspiration and Kidspiration.
- Kidspiration Lessons
- Presented by the Canby, Oregon Schools, this page offers more than 50 different K-3 examples of templates used for specific instructional purposes.
- Kidspiration Activities (Free)
- A few activities for you to look at.
- Free 30-Day Trial: Kidspiration Download
- This is a fully loaded version of Kidspiration.
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