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Kidspiration
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Kidspiration 
What does it do? Kidspiration includes many tools to help K-3 students map, web, organize, and display ideas visually.  Create graphic organizers, concept maps, and other diagrams with special formatting tools and a huge symbol library.  All menus, buttons and text is supported by audio so kids can hear what they create. 
How does this link to early literacy? Organizing information into visual displays increases understanding of new ideas and helps children see relationships between concepts.  The use of pictoral images improve recall for learners and the use of Kidspiration's special writing view helps young children expand their ideas into written expression.  Tasks completed in Kidspiration before, during and after interacting with others or with a piece of text can aid in categorizing, comparing, and synthesizing information. 
Online Resources

 
 
Responding to Literature with Kidspiration
Literature: Footprints in the Snow, by Cynthia Benjamin (Hello Reader, Level 1) 
Enrichment Literature: In the Woods: Who's Been Here, by Lindsey Barrett George
Software Tool: Kidspiration, by Inspiration
Additional Internet Resource: Enchanted Learning's Animal Habitats Resource
Grade Level: 2-3

Tasks: 

  1. Shared or Guided Reading: While reading the text, notice the setting of the story and what kind of animals live in that type of environment/habitat.  After reading the text, encourage children to think of other habitats in which animals where you may notice footprints (the beach, the swamp, the desert). 
  2. Center Activity or Guided Reading: Ask children to list the animals they know that live in the different habitats.  Write each animal's name or draw a picture of the animal on an index card. Label each card with the habitat that each animal lives in.  Sort the cards by habitat. Label a different colored index card with the category title and paper clip the appropriate animals to that category label. 
  3. Center or Partner Activity at Computer: Bring your sorted and labeled index cards to the computer.  Use Kidspiration to create a web that illustrates the different animals that live in each of the selected habitate.  Use the colored index cards as your main idea links and the other cards as details off each main link.  Be sure to create a center link and label it with an appropriate title. 
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