Mrs. Cross and I recently did a little mindmapping project with her First Graders. Their storyline this term is Top Chef and one of the things they will be writing during this storyline is a description of the daily work a chef does. Since we want to start introducing kids to the concept of mindmapping their ideas from the very beginning, we thought this would be a good project for Popplet.
We could have just done the project as a whole class, because in First Grade it really only needs to be an intro, but Mrs. Cross was ambitious and wanted the kiddos to make their own Popplets (with partners)
So we did.
I collected pictures of Chefs working from Google and showed them how to add pictures and thoughts to Popple.
They thought I was magic when I pulled the first picture in, I'm not sure why, but it was pretty cute.
We did 2 -45 minute sessions with them and they all made their Popplets to use for their writing later on. The awesome thing about this type of mind-mapping is now they'll be able to picture the chef mixing and sautéing and chopping while they write.
I also thought it was a pretty great way to have them practice with tech tools. It highlighted what basic skills we still need to teach them (like how to make a Capital letter with the shift key and one user on the trackpad at a time).
Here are little samples of the Popples they made
