Visual learning is an effective way to teach students to think, to organize, to connect, and to extend all kinds of learning experiences. Teachers have always known this and have scrounged for pictures, posters, and manipulatives to give the written word and the spoken word visual life in their students’ minds. Kidspiration provides us with an entire wardrobe of images and gives even our youngest students the ability to construct meaningful learning using symbols to express ideas extending well beyond their limited written literacy. While writing responses to classroom activities may not yet be possible, webbing responses gives organization and clarity to their thoughts, and captures on paper insights once relegated only to discussion circles within the classroom.

Kidspiration activities for use in primary classrooms abound. The Kidspiration web site provides examples of how the program may be used for various types of webbing includng idea maps or concept maps to help students organize information, understand various elements, think more creatively, or make meaningful connections. There are also a number of templates within the program itself that are easily adapted to support Virginia’s Standards of Learning. The ability to add graphics and create additional symbol libraries makes this versatile piece of software a keeper in anyone’s book. The World Wide Web is teeming with templates created by Kidspiration-using teachers from all over the United States. Here in FCPS, our own Carolyn Thalman, School Based Technology Specialist (SBTS) at London Towne and Cherry Run, has posted a page of ideas to share using Kidspiration and Inspiration, SBTS also share ideas through Outlook including:

• Classifying animals by their coverings and whether they swim, walk, fly, hop, or slither (supports the 2nd grade science unit Animals and Their Environments)

• Reinforcing the idea of ordinal numbers using The Gingerbread Man – who said stop first, second, third, etc.(supports counting and sequencing in math and language arts)

• Comparing two similar works of literature - The Mitten and The Old Man’s Mitten

• Comparing the rivers, landmarks, contributions, and geography of Egypt and China and then using this web to discuss questions like, How were the Great Wall and the Pyramids similar? (supports 3rd grade social studies)

• Webbing Virginia symbols using a symbol library created from the Capitol Classroom (supports 4th grade Social Studies)

• Sorting objects we can push and pull (supports the science unit Simple Machines)

• sorting objects that would sink or float in a bathtub (supports science unit Sink or Float)

• Placing coins in a piggy bank to make a target sum, How could you save 22¢ using five coins? (supports Standards of Learning in mathematics)

Kidspiration is easy to use, runs well on both the PC and Macintosh platforms, and is well supported by both the experts at the Kidspiration/Inspiration web site and a large user group within Fairfax County Public Schools. If you have not yet discovered its power, ask an SBTS to show you some examples. Kidspiration develops the kind of visual thinking which facilitates later research projects in upper elementary, middle school, and beyond. It also provides a perfect transition into Inspiration and its more powerful organization tools.