Graciela's Third Grade Classroom:

Using Kidspiration to Improve Writing

During the 2001-2002 school year, Graciela was a relatively new third grade teacher of a diverse class of students representing a broad range of backgrounds, languages, abilities, and needs. She emphasized literacy development and was deeply committed to improving her students’ writing skills. Gradually, her comfort level in using the two computers in her classroom increased. She also made weekly use of the computer lab.

When she was the presenting teacher at a STAR Cycle meeting, she described a recent narrative writing assignment. After writing a first draft, students participated in a mini-lesson on general vs. specific words and then were asked to revise their drafts. She was not happy with the results and asked her colleagues for help: "How can I encourage my students to add detail ('show and not tell') and help them organize their writing better?"

After examining and discussing the work of the three students, the conversation shifted to strategies. One of the strategies was to have students create semantic maps using Kidspiration, a more student-friendly version of Inspiration. Graciela said that since she already used printed graphic organizers with her students, she would like to learn more about how to do this electronically.

Later that day, with a substitute teacher covering her class, Graciela spent two hours in the computer lab exploring Kidspiration. She had help from STAR Tech’s project staff as part of the 1:1 Assistance program. Matt, the school’s computer specialist, also joined them. After an overview and demonstration of the program's capabilities, Graciela reviewed some examples in the Kidspiration activity folder to gain an image of possible uses. For example, she saw how she could use the program to make a variety of symbols, label them with ideas, and link them together to form a web. She found the Inspiration/Kidspiration website, which had several sample activities and suggestions for use in a variety of curriculum areas. The training involved walking Graciela through some of the operations while telling her the steps to follow. Being a fairly comfortable computer user, Graciela learned the new skills quickly.

Graciela was very excited about the program and brainstormed several ways she could use it for writing activities with her students. She liked the idea of having her students organize their ideas visually because it could help them understand patterns and relationships between concepts. She could also see how it would stimulate creative thinking. She thought she might start with a character map to help her students pull out important information from their reading and become more aware of specific details.

To do this, Graciela needed to learn how to access the program’s large template collection and modify the templates for her own use. Graciela found an example that had a diagram for character analysis and modified it to fit a book that her students were reading, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (see example).

Graciela brainstormed ways to have her class begin using the program. She decided to start by printing out the diagrams on transparencies so that she could project them on the wall for her students. She thought this strategy would give the students a better sense of how the diagrams were constructed before going to the computer lab. Matt offered to do a Kidspiration training session with the entire class once Graciela felt they were ready. Graciela hoped to have her students start on the computer by filling in activities (such as the character analysis) that she had created for them. Once they had more understanding of the concepts and had become fluent with the program they could move on to creating their own organizers.

Graciela implemented use of Kidspiration into her writing assignment in the following way:

• She printed the graphic organizer that she had created during her training session and then photocopied it onto a transparency.
  
  
• She read a chapter from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory aloud to the whole class.
  
  
• Then she projected the character analysis graphic organizer using an overhead projector.
  
  
• She engaged the class in a brainstorming activity, inviting the students to tell her what content to fill in for each of the areas.
  
  
• Later, during independent reading time, she gave students similar graphic organizers (blank and printed on paper) to fill in as they did their reading.
  
  
• When students were beginning their draft writing, she asked them to organize their ideas into main ideas with supporting details.

Graciela commented that this activity made her realize that, "When the students are struggling, you really have to break it down for them." She was pleased with the results of using the template for a group brainstorming session because she felt it helped students generate more interesting ideas for writing. It also gave them a basis for identifying and then using specific details to support their main idea.

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