Few students in Melinda Leitner’s classrooms share a common native language, as they come from countries around the globe, speaking a colorful array of languages—Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic, Hindi, Russian and several others, including African dialects that do not have a written form. Leitner, an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, travels among three demographically different elementary schools in Henrico County Public Schools, located in suburban Richmond, Va., working with students in kindergarten through grade 5 with widely varying levels of English language proficiency. For the past six years, she’s been relying on Kidspiration®, the visual way to explore and understand words, numbers and concepts, from Inspiration® Software, Inc., to help her students build English language skills across the curriculum.

“My students learn English through the content, and Kidspiration makes it very visual and hands-on for them,” said Leitner. “I might have a group of level-one students—beginning English speakers—with a kindergartner, a couple of third graders and a fifth grader. And even though everyone is learning different content, they are all on computers using Kidspiration, working side by side.”

Designed specifically for early learners in kindergarten through fifth grade, Kidspiration develops thinking and literacy skills using proven visual learning principles. In reading and writing, Kidspiration strengthens word recognition, vocabulary, comprehension and written expression.

Henrico County’s ESL students spend the majority of their days in class with native English speakers, and when Leitner works with them in ESL, she revisits much of the same content, to reinforce what they’ve learned. “Social English,” which students use on the playground, comes quickly, but reading, writing and understanding “academic English” takes time, she explained.

During a geography lesson, Leitner’s students used a template she created in Kidspiration to make written and visual notes about regions in Virginia.

“Kidspiration allows students to learn the academic English in a fun way. It’s not a worksheet or a textbook, but rather something they can manipulate, print out and take home as their study guide.”

As with all students in the state, ESL students must pass the state assessment, the Virginia Standards of Learning. And whether Leitner is teaching fourth graders about the regions of Virginia or second graders about famous Americans, she often uses Kidspiration. “They may not have the language skills to express it, but with Kidspiration, they can show that they understand the content. And when they go back to the classroom, they are better equipped to find the words to explain what they know.”

Leitner works with groups of up to five students at a time, in a setting where they feel comfortable speaking up—something many are hesitant to do among their native-English-speaking peers in the regular classroom. She encourages group discussions to develop language skills, and she uses Kidspiration for that, as well. “When they point at a picture on the screen, they’re able to show me what they’re thinking, and the words flow more easily,” she said. “They don’t clam up, because they have the visual to help convey what they mean.”

Whether she is pulling from Kidspiration’s vast selection of ready-to-use templates or creating her own, Leitner finds uses for Kidspiration every day—in social studies, science, math and language arts—from teaching basic skills to communicating complex concepts.

For students who haven’t mastered phonetic sounds, especially those who speak languages with no written representation, she has them do a letter sort on Kidspiration. And with Kidspiration’s Listen tool, students hear words read aloud, which strengthens word recognition and comprehension. “They enjoy the voice,” she said. For example, if a student is looking at a picture of the Statue of Liberty, he can slide the cursor over it and hear the words over and over while reading them, until he fully understands the three separate words that make up the monument’s name.

As Virginia “is a big history state,” Leitner has put Kidspiration to work teaching a wide variety of social studies topics. In science, she teaches the elements, plant and animal cells, closed- and open-circuit electricity, and weather patterns. She also uses Kidspiration to teach the language of math, including “equal to,” “less than” and “more than.” Leitner appreciates the ease with which her students can build a diagram, add visual elements and then click to transform it into a written format. “It’s easy to add other elements to anything you create,” she said. “And my students are proud of what they make—they definitely enjoy taking home their finished work.”

Leitner’s students used this Kidspiration template to record, classify, and sort ideas and visual cues during a science lesson.

Students are particularly fond of Kidspiration’s well-stocked library of clip art, she said, as well as the ability to add their own images. “It’s colorful, and it captures their attention. What kid wouldn’t like learning this way?” she asked.

Sometimes words can only be learned through visuals because they’re nearly impossible to describe otherwise, and Kidspiration is the key to Leitner’s students’ understanding, she said. Eels or barnacles, for example, are strange words for ESL students to learn, because they’re not creatures they see very often, she explained. She has her students use Kidspiration to pull up pictures of them, write about them and create colorful diagrams. When other subjects, such as holidays, cause confusion, she has students create picture sentences about them, adding words under the pictures to explain the meaning.

Leitner considers Kidspiration a vital part of the learning process for her students and sees “an unlimited number of ways you can use it,” she said. “I use it to supplement what I teach, and we always have fun with it. With Kidspiration, my students take what they’re taught, and they reach.”

At Fairview Elementary School in Lake Charles, La., first-grade teacher Jennifer Frederick is dedicated to helping her students achieve in the face of the obstacles before them: 73 percent of the students in this Title I school are eligible for free or reduced lunch, and many come from families still recovering from the destruction caused by Hurricane Rita. Because engaging her students in learning is key to their success, Frederick makes daily use of Kidspiration®, the visual way to explore and understand words, numbers and concepts, from Inspiration® Software, Inc., to support teaching and learning across the curriculum.

Now in her third year as a teacher, Frederick began using Kidspiration with the kindergarten class she taught last year and today can scarcely imagine a classroom without it. “I know there are other ways I could teach, but my students wouldn’t be nearly as enthusiastic about learning,” she said.

Designed specifically for early learners in kindergarten through fifth grade, Kidspiration develops thinking, literacy and numeracy skills using proven visual learning techniques. In reading and writing, Kidspiration strengthens word recognition, vocabulary, comprehension and written expression. With Kidspiration’s visual math tools, students build reasoning and problem-solving skills.

With a sharp focus on boosting literacy skills, teachers at Fairview Elementary School conduct a school-wide 90-minute reading block each day, followed by 60 minutes of small-group reading. During some of this allotted time, Frederick uses Kidspiration to teach phonetic sounds. Each week, she focuses on one sound, such as “ch” or “wh,” and her students create “bubble diagrams” displaying at least five pictures that begin with the sound. Next, they use Kidspiration’s Record tool to record themselves saying the names of the pictures, making valuable literacy connections. After Frederick models what to do, every one of the 22 students completes the exercise, which is available on two classroom computers, by week’s end. “They just take off with it,” she said. “They’re definitely learning to read better with Kidspiration because they’re having so much fun with it.”

With Kidspiration’s Listen tool, students can hear words read aloud, strengthening word recognition and comprehension. Frederick said her students are always captivated by the tool. “They love hearing the computer voice speak the words, and it reinforces what they’re learning,” she said.

Teachers can use Kidspiration to create their own activity, as in this “Sequencing the Story” exercise from Frederick’s classroom.

When teaching writing skills, Frederick starts by helping students create a main idea in Kidspiration, after which they break down the sequence of ideas into boxes. Soon, they are writing sentences and piecing them together to create a story. She has put this writing exercise to work both as a whole class and with individual students. “All of my students enjoy using Kidspiration, and they can use it no matter what their skill level is,” she said. “Some take it to high levels and create their own stories. They are all gaining valuable skills and learning new concepts with it.”

In teaching math this year to first graders, Frederick noticed that it’s sometimes difficult for them to grasp subtraction. “They like to put it all together, not take it apart,” she said. She foresees using Kidspiration with them for learning everything from how to solve word problems in math to telling time. “They’re very visual, and Kidspiration has great manipulatives that will help them see the math and begin to develop an understanding of how it works.”

As part of a social studies unit examining other cultures, Frederick invited her sister, who had done missionary work in the Ukraine, to cook cuisine native to the region and share her knowledge of the culture. Incorporating Kidspiration into the lesson, Frederick guided the class in creating a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the various aspects of life in the Ukraine. “With Kidspiration, they could really visualize the similarities and differences,” she said. “It was all there for them to see.”

No matter the subject area, Frederick is committed to providing her students with a visual learning environment to help them meet state learning goals. With the wide variety of ready-to-use templates available in Kidspiration, Frederick said it’s “as easy as pulling them up and saving them—I don’t have to create them myself,” she said. “The possibilities are almost endless.”

Frederick was recently recognized as one of 12 Silver Star winners worldwide in Inspiration Software’s Inspired Learning Awards, for her creative use of Kidspiration. Since then, many of her colleagues at Fairview Elementary “are really looking at Kidspiration,” she said. “People are seeing its benefits, and I’m sure others will want it for their classrooms, too.”

With the school year just under way, Frederick has not been able to collect official data on her students’ progress, but she has seen higher levels of achievement and greater enthusiasm for learning since she started using Kidspiration. “I can tell you what I’m seeing—my students love Kidspiration, and they’re definitely learning better with it,” she said.

Frederick had her students use Kidspiration to help them identify a story’s main characters.

Excitement builds as kindergarten teacher Debi Stewart reaches into her “fairness cup” of popsicle sticks bearing her students’ names, to choose who will be next to take a turn using Kidspiration®, the visual way to explore and understand words, numbers and concepts, from Inspiration Software®. This time, they’re matching words that rhyme. With an easy motion, a student places “clock” and “block” and the accompanying graphics side by side. Stewart uses Kidspiration with an electronic whiteboard, so her students’ selections are displayed for all to see.

“When I turn on Kidspiration, they say, ‘Can we play now?’” said Stewart, who teaches at Genoa Elementary in Pasadena Independent School District, located near Houston. “They’re seeing, hearing and moving objects, which makes learning fun.”

Created for learners in kindergarten through fifth grade, Kidspiration develops thinking, literacy and numeracy skills using proven visual learning principles. In reading and writing, Kidspiration strengthens word recognition, vocabulary, comprehension and written expression. With Kidspiration’s visual math tools, students build reasoning and problem-solving skills. With 20 years of teaching experience behind her, Stewart considered herself “old school,” acknowledging her long-standing affection for paper and pencil. Until recently, her computer knowledge was limited to word processing and a little email and Internet browsing. Lately, she’s moved in a new direction, since discovering the range of learning opportunities available with Kidspiration—for both independent and teacher-initiated activities. And she’s gained a reputation in her district as a champion of technology—and more specifically, as “the Kidspiration person,” she said.

“You really lose out if you don’t learn the technology. I have about 10 more years to teach, and I need to be able to teach this way, because that’s how the kids are learning,” she noted.

With the Kidspiration template “The Wind Blew,” Stewart taught her students about nouns and verbs.

Since she first saw Kidspiration at a staff-development event, it’s become an indispensable part of her classroom—a tool she uses to support student learning in language arts, math, science and social studies.

“It hit me that I can apply Kidspiration throughout my day, to so many of my subjects,” she said. “I’ve really gotten into it, playing with it and making things.” She’s put some of her favorite worksheets in Kidspiration, which has “brought them to life.”

As a participant in Inspiration Software’s online Inspired Learning Community, Stewart has found and shared numerous lesson ideas with educators near and far. In the last six months, she has created nearly 150 Kidspiration templates “because I find it’s fun to make them from scratch,” she said. “My flash drive is almost overflowing with them.”

When her district’s curriculum doesn’t include resources for a lesson, she creates her own. “I’ve tried to fill in all the gaps, for my students and others in the district, and I’ve really enjoyed it so much,” she said.

For example, when she needed to teach her students the difference between living and nonliving things, she made a template and put her class to work on Kidspiration, moving pictures and words to the proper category. In the past, Stewart would create a poster or a bulletin board to teach such a concept. “Kidspiration is so much easier, and it really captures students’ attention. These are not the students we had 20 years ago. They want to learn with technology, and when they do, they’re so engaged in the learning,” she said.

When her class read “The Wind Blew,” she created a Kidspiration template to teach her students about nouns and verbs. Also in language arts, she made templates for reviewing letters and sight words and for learning compound words and ending sounds. In science, she’s used Kidspiration to teach the anatomy of an apple, the five senses, things that fly and don’t fly, and the hatching of an egg. In social studies, she’s used it to teach land forms and presidents, and in math to teach shapes and dividing them in half, as well as graphs and sorting.

She’s also taught analogies and relationships, real and make-believe, what belongs, and wants and needs, all using Kidspiration. When the holidays come, Stewart is prepared with templates for creating pumpkins, snowmen, presidents and valentines.

This Kidspiration lesson helps students identify objects other than shapes, by size.

With countless Kidspiration successes behind her, Stewart has been spreading the word within her school and district. After creating file after file of lesson plans in Kidspiration, she burned a CD to share with her colleagues. “I said, ‘This is so easy—go out and do this,’ and everyone was excited.”

Stewart has big plans for Kidspiration in the coming school year. In 2009, for the first time, the state of Texas required that kindergartners take the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. Stewart said her kindergartners showed a need for improvement in vocabulary—a challenge she plans to take on with Kidspiration, using categories, retelling of stories and flow charts. In addition, she’ll develop a word list, and the students will locate pictures that relate to or describe the word, all with Kidspiration.

“Students will make sentences such as ‘I see a dog.’ We can expand that sentence by using more descriptive words. We can go from picture mode to writing mode and write, ‘I see a large black dog in the yard.’ Kidspiration has excellent clip art, which will allow the students to put a large black dog in a yard, in the picture mode, and then we will write about our picture,” she said.

In addition, Stewart plans to have her students author their own projects in Kidspiration. “It will contribute to their higher level thinking when they are responsible for their own learning,” she said.

“The kids have such a good time with Kidspiration, and it’s amazing to see how much they can do with it,” she said. “I just can’t believe how cool it is—I get so much joy out of it.”

When kindergarten teacher Hollie Furr sets out to teach her young learners about nutrition, she starts by using Kidspiration® 3 from Inspiration® Software, to sort by food groups, labeling each food under its picture. Then the students take over, identifying foods such as rice, yogurt and apples and placing them in the proper nutritional groups.

“When the kids are finished, they know which foods fall in which groups. The best part is they don’t realize it’s work, which is every teacher’s dream,” said Furr, who teaches at Cub Run Elementary, part of Rockingham County Public Schools in central Virginia.

Obe Hostetter, an instructional technology resource teacher for this district of 11,400 students and 21 schools, has been busy putting Kidspiration 3 into the hands of teachers in the elementary schools he supports. “This software is one of the easiest to learn and teach,” he said. He recalls an in-service day when he demonstrated Kidspiration, and “the teachers were so excited that they ordered it for their classrooms that day.”

To help teachers make the best use of Kidspiration with their students, Hostetter has compiled an impressive collection of templates—some created by teachers in his district and many he found on the Internet—that align with the state of Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL). He organizes the templates by grade level, making it easy for teachers to find the lessons they need to meet the standards. And, in many cases, what they are learning not only aligns with state standards, but it also supports the 21st Century Skills Framework.

Hollie Farr uses Kidspiration to teach her kindergarten students upper- and lower-case letters of the alphabet.

Whenever Hostetter sees a template he likes, he sends it to any teachers in his district who might be able to use it. “Some of the teachers have been very creative in making their own templates. People can change the templates and make them fit their own style, building on someone else’s creativity, not reinventing the wheel,” he said.

Hostetter’s also been sharing his templates with other districts across the state, and adding their best templates to his collection. His goal is to arm teachers with the best tools to help students succeed. “I know where teachers are coming from. There’s a lot to keep track of to meet the standards. If you make it easy and it’s helpful, they’ll use it.”

Numerous teachers in Rockingham County have been looking for help meeting social studies and science standards, said Hostetter, and now templates to address those standards are just a click away. He said teachers appreciate being able to preview a lesson in Kidspiration 3 without clicking it open. Another benefit is the ability to click on a word and hear it, which is especially helpful for younger students and English language learners. Kidspiration 3 also easily integrates with the district’s interactive whiteboards, “so they have fun using it,” he said.

In Furr’s classroom, lessons with Kidspiration have included make-believe versus real, money, upper- and lower-case letters of the alphabet, the weather, and dressing people with the right clothes for the season. With Kidspiration’s symbol library, teachers can type in the name of something, such as a frog, and it will immediately bring up a picture of it. “My favorite thing is how realistic the graphics are,” she said.

Her students are always on task with Kidspiration, she said—even those who typically have difficulty focusing. “They don’t look around and try to talk to other students, because they’re enjoying the assignments—they’re like games to them,” she said. “I’ve actually had kids cry when we’ve run out of time to finish an assignment in Kidspiration.”

Furr’s colleague Carolyn Miller teaches second grade at Cub Run Elementary, and she, too, is making great use of Kidspiration in her classroom—and has been for about five years. She finds it very useful for teaching writing—starting with Kidspiration “webs” where students’ ideas are developed, and progressing from there. “In second grade, they’re learning to organize their thoughts on paper. Kidspiration is an instant success because it helps students break down the task. It’s very easy for them to learn—they make the web, add pictures and then click to writing, and they can see how their thoughts translate to paragraphs,” she said.

Miller said she’s been amazed at the detail of the webs her students have created. “It’s like you gave them a piece of paper and crayon,” she said. “The templates are colorful and bright and pertain to what we’re doing. The kids are always excited about using Kidspiration.” Students feel a great sense of accomplishment, too, she said as they are making something that comes to fruition before their eyes.

A “big plus” that’s not available in other programs is the freedom to tailor the templates to meet the state standards, she said. “The basic templates and pictures are there, and we can put them together to create what we need.” She uses Kidspiration for lessons as well as reviews and tests. “It’s so much better than a worksheet,” she said.

For visual learners, Kidspiration is a real asset, said Miller, capturing their attention much better than reading alone. “For example, in learning about nouns and verbs, they’re seeing the visuals and manipulating them. They’re much more a part of the process.” Kidspiration is also useful for differentiating instruction for her students, said Miller. “I have second graders reading at fifth- and sixth-grade levels, and others who are just learning to read. Everyone is able to do research and webbing and create some wonderful pieces of writing.”

Students in Sue Haley’s second-grade classroom use Kidspiration to compare the ancient civilizations of Egypt and China.

In Sue Haley’s second-grade classroom at Rockingham County’s Mountain View Elementary, she and her students enjoy using Kidspiration templates on their interactive whiteboard. A recent lesson involved comparing the ancient civilizations of Egypt and China with Kidspiration symbols. They flipped to writing view and wrote short descriptions of the important contributions of the civilizations. “It’s a very powerful learning tool with graphic organizers to represent children’s understanding of difficult SOL concepts,” said Haley.

She said Kidspiration has helped her students learn to organize, compare and contrast difficult materials and works well with English language learners, students with special needs and gifted learners. “My students enjoy Kidspiration,” she said. “It’s simple for them to work with, and they love to take home what they’ve created.”

Hostetter noted that he sees students playing on Kidspiration, just for fun, when they get a chance. “That says something,” he said.

Added Miller, “Kidspiration is exciting for the students and easy for the teachers. There’s a lot of flexibility—it’s all right there.”

When her fourth-grade students started last school year with an average score of just 43 percent on state math benchmark tests, teacher Jennifer Patgorski was determined to find a way to engage them in learning so they could achieve at the levels she knew were possible. Today, the 112 students who pass through her classroom each day at John Tyler Elementary, part of Portsmouth Public Schools near Norfolk, Va., are reaching brand-new heights. Now with math test scores in the 80s, her students are realizing the greatest level of improvement in their school.

Patgorski credits the math tools in Kidspiration® 3, the visual way to explore words, numbers and concepts, with her students’ academic transformation. It all began after her colleague Brian McKee, a district technology resource teacher, suggested that Kidspiration might be the answer for her students, who were having difficulty focusing on math instruction. “Brian only had to show me Kidspiration once, and I was so excited that I stayed after school until 7:00 that night to see what it could do,” she said.

Three weeks into the school year, Patgorski’s students began using Kidspiration on the laptops in her classroom. Her first order of business was subtraction, a concept that was new to many of her students. After she used Kidspiration Base Ten Blocks™ to demonstrate the concept on an interactive whiteboard, her students quickly caught on and are now able to subtract with numbers in the millions. “They were able to split up the tens, and they became 10 ones. They could actually see the regrouping,” she explained. “They said, ‘wow, that was amazing.’”

Patgorski said Wednesday is her students’ favorite day of the week because they learn with Kidspiration. “On Wednesdays, they’re better behaved and more on task because using Kidspiration is a reward for them. When you pass out a worksheet, you have some who fill in answers just to get it done. This is a technology generation, and they learn so much more when we meet them where they are.”

Each week she introduces a new concept, and the next one will be fractions—a subject that will be easy to teach with Kidspiration Fraction Tiles™ and Kidspiration Fraction Boxes™, said Patgorski. “I found several fractions activities that are great—and the kids will really like them. I’ve put together my lesson plans for the next few months, and I have yet to find anything that I can’t teach with Kidspiration,” she said.

When her students took a recent assessment on multiplication, more than 85 percent passed, a number rarely seen so early in the school year. “We used Kidspiration to acclimate them to what multiplying really means,” said Patgorski. “They could see why eight times four is 32. Kidspiration makes it more relatable.”

Created for K-5 learners, Kidspiration develops thinking, literacy and numeracy skills using proven visual learning principles. In reading and writing, Kidspiration strengthens word recognition, vocabulary, comprehension and written expression. With the new visual math tools in Kidspiration 3, students build a strong mathematical foundation for reasoning and problem-solving by using visual representations to understand math concepts. Combining the hands-on learning power of manipulatives with the benefits of computer interactivity, Kidspiration gives students the tools to grasp essential and sometimes challenging math concepts.

Patgorski finds Kidspiration reaches students of every learning ability—from special education to advanced students. Even students with the most severe disabilities—those who require help from paraprofessionals to navigate the school day—are able to use Kidspiration, she said. “I put them on Kidspiration and they are able to fully participate, 100 percent, doing the exact same thing as everyone else. You can imagine how that makes them feel.”

Word is spreading about Kidspiration at John Tyler Elementary, said Patgorski, and another teacher will be using it to teach math soon. Patgorski’s been telling other teachers about it—and suggesting they try it with science, social studies and reading, too. “When I’m using it, I leave my door wide open so everyone can see how wonderful I am,” she said with a laugh. McKee, also, has been inspiring other district elementary teachers to try Kidspiration, and foresees more and more adoptions. “My push is to integrate technology as a resource that is part of the day—to get away from ‘drill and kill,’ which teachers and students are tired of,” he said.

In this district of more than 15,000 students, McKee oversees the technology needs of 1,100 students and 80 teachers. With approximately half of the students in the district qualifying for free or reduced lunch, many have struggles at home that make it difficult to focus at school. “These students need that little spark—we need to take them beyond the worksheet,” he said.

And when students are engaged in learning, class management is much easier, said McKee. After he brought Kidspiration to Patgorski’s math classes, “everyone was on task,” he said. “When one student started to be disruptive, she told him if he didn’t shape up, he’d have to do his work with paper and pencil. You can’t believe how quickly he snapped into shape.” Perhaps the best part of using Kidspiration is the plentiful opportunities it provides for “light-bulb moments,” said McKee. “When you see that teachable moment and the student says, ‘I get it,’ that’s why we went into teaching.”

At a recent district technology training day, the largest turnout was for a session on Kidspiration 3, he said. “The reaction was, ‘oh, my—that is amazing,’” said McKee. “We had teachers and paraprofessionals from all over the city come in to see it. When they tried it, you could feel their excitement as they discussed the ways they could use it to reach their students in all subjects.”

Kids catch on quickly with visual learning techniques

“I’m a visual person,” says Patti Weeg, the Title 1 Computer Teacher at Delmar Elementary in Delmar, Maryland. She meets the needs of her students the same way she meets her own: by teaching to the visual learner in every student. Kidspiration, with its colors and pictures, grabbed her attention immediately as a program that her students would respond to, and she was right.

Weeg is directly responsible for her six computers in the Title I lab, but she’s also nominally in charge of the 26 Pentiums in a computer lab nearby that serves 1,000 students in Pre- K through grade 5. She helps “next door” by making Kidspiration templates for other teachers to use in the lab with their students. Having a template in place allows the youngsters to get right to the lesson; their teacher has already done the set-up work in the classroom so students can dive right into using the computers and the software.

Initially, Weeg thought Kidspiration was only a writing tool because it was presented to her through story webs. But once she had the chance to really use the software, it became very clear that this was a tool suitable for nearly any subject.

For example, browsing Kidspiration’s different symbol libraries revealed colorful sets tailored for geography, math, plants and animals, food and health, science, social studies, language arts, school days, and more. Weeg discovered that teachers could build an earthscience activity, for example, in 10 minutes just by placing symbols for trees, water, air, wind, and soil into a Kidspiration diagram with a few labels and arrows. Students can then fill in the blanks, or drag arrows around to indicate how the cycle works. The options are endless.

Moreover, browsing the 75 activity templates included with the program demonstrated to her the many ways in which Kidspiration could be used for social studies, science, math, or reading and writing. Many of the activity templates also cross narrow subject boundaries and Weeg especially likes that approach. Her first forays with the program bear that out.

Activities target early math and reading skills

One of Weeg’s early Kidspiration lessons covered both math and pre-reading skills. She designed a click-anddrag alphabet activity for kindergartners in which they had to separate those letters made only of curves from letters made only of straight lines, from a third group of letters made of both. This incorporates the concepts of letter recognition, and introduces students to the idea of organizing sets and subsets as well. Plus, the students get a kick out of kinesthetically dragging letters around on screen.

In a similar activity, first graders work with money amounts; if the object costs eight cents, the student has to drag over a nickel and three pennies. This addresses the skills of addition, reading, and identifying monetary amounts. And unlike a paper worksheet, if the lesson is not done exactly right the first time, with Kidspiration, students can easily start over and still print out a clean final copy.

One project that got everyone excited this year was a story web put together by the kindergartners. It was a simple “About Me” exercise (my hair is brown, my eyes are blue, etc.) that each student did. What made it extra special was including the students’ own faces in their story webs. Weeg scanned in every child’s photo, placing it in the middle of each student’s story web. “When the little ones saw their own face on that screen, that was just precious,” she recalls. “They were so excited.”

Existing projects at Delmar Elementary have also gotten a lift from Kidspiration. For instance, via an Authors in Residence program, second and third graders traditionally build an original story. This year, the fivemonth project utilized Kidspiration to create story webs and outlines for these original tales which the young authors could then produce into a bound book.

Value in "taking it one step further"

To ensure she utilizes the full power of Kidspiration and doesn’t depend solely on visual worksheets, Weeg is careful to incorporate a writing element into every template she creates. For example, in a cause-and-effect exercise, third graders were asked to drag causes into one group and effects into another. They then had to create their own effect to explain a chosen cause, and type it into a Text Box.

This “taking it one step further” ability is, Weeg feels, one of many characteristics that Kidspiration has going for it. Ease of use is another significant plus. Teachers have found it very easy to use; and Weeg herself uses Kidspiration to make presentations for her professional colleagues outside of class.

Young students find Kidspiration “visually appealing,” she says, so they want to build with it and explore in it. In fact, Weeg comments that students usually learn the program more quickly than their teachers do because “they are not afraid to explore.”

Her next step, says Weeg, is to motivate more teachers to build their own templates. Once they’ve learned the process of making and using a customized Kidspiration template, they’ll gain confidence and find many creative and practical uses, she believes. It was how she learned the program herself, and it was “awfully easy.” Confident of a great future, Weeg continues to discover new ideas in the software, and feels “sure there are many untapped resources [she] can provide for the teachers” through Kidspiration.

While cost savings are expected, it’s the visual learning approach of the software that is the real attraction.

“Some kids are so visual,” says Pattie Knox, Tech Specialist and self-appointed Head Cheerleader for Kidspiration software in North Canton City School District, Ohio. “You can give kids a blank piece of paper and they don’t know where to begin,” but with a Kidspiration template, they have the visual cues they need to organize their thoughts into a cohesive whole. When the students switch from the template to the outline, they “are amazed to see what they’ve done.”

That “ah ha” moment is enough for Knox. Since first seeing a Kidspiration demonstration, she has pushed steadily for her schools to adopt it. Starting in the fall of 2002, the district will have 200 Kidspiration licenses and 200 Inspiration® licenses spread over four elementary schools with five computers per classroom. And Knox is excited by the possibilities, to say the least. Professional development begins this summer. Teachers will be required to attend a one-hour introduction to Kidspiration where they will learn to understand the software, learn to design their own templates, and get a glimpse of what they can do in their classes. This required training is a first for the district. Usually what happens, says Knox, is “we buy some software, we put it on all of the computers, and some teachers use it, some don’t.” This time, all the teachers will be trained on Kidspiration and Inspiration, and there will be a coordinated push to have them integrate the programs into their classrooms.

“As a tech specialist, I can see that in the long run we will save money on software. If we take the time to train our teachers in Kidspiration [and Inspiration] use, we’ll eliminate the perceived need for specialized software. Kidspiration is truly cross-curricular, it can be used to do almost anything.” Teachers can create tailor-made activities that address concepts anywhere in the curriculum. “We’re not buying software,” says Knox, “we’re buying a teaching concept.”

No waiting for “I can do it” satisfaction

The district received the software just last month, in April of 2002. But teachers didn’t wait for their summer training before they started to put Kidspiration to use in their classroom. Some jumped right in. In one school, for instance, fifth graders designed Kidspiration templates for their first-grade “book buddies.” The older kids created a lesson for their younger buddies, then sat down with them to help them work through it. Fifth graders first recorded the instructions in their own voices, then chose words and pictures for the template that the first graders had to click and drag to the appropriate places. Both sets of students benefited: the fifth graders learned by teaching others, while the first graders learned both the lesson in the template and the “I can do it” satisfaction that came from completing it. Working in pairs is a useful strategy even without a second class. For instance, Knox likes to pair up two first graders at each computer: one to read the instructions, the other to work with Kidspiration at the keyboard. Then they switch. This method frees up a lot of an instructor’s time, as well as empowers students to think that they are running their own show. Knox says this approach has been used successfully in multiple grade levels for lessons involving “compare and contrast” and to teach about the different branches of the U.S. government, for example.

Knox is also a great believer in the Web as a medium for learning. She loves the fact that it is so easy to convert Kidspiration documents to HTML format—just a few simple clicks—which allows her to post students’ work online quickly. She has been part of several collaborative online projects and is looking forward to the next one, which will be centered entirely on Kidspiration.

The ability to share templates is just one reason for her enthusiasm. “We love that we get ideas and lesson plans from across the country” for things to do with Kidspiration, Knox comments. First-grade teachers nationwide need to teach the same concepts, and they are all looking for new and stimulating ways to present those concepts. Sharing Kidspiration templates via the Web is like tapping into a global teaching community. “If a teacher in California can find a template online made by a teacher in Ohio, that’s awesome,” she explains.

More math and science in the future

Kidspiration’s future in North Canton looks bright. Knox sees the use of Kidspiration expanding from language arts to other disciplines in a natural progression. For instance, Kidspiration is “incredible for classifying,” and she is already dreaming up ideas for more Web-based applications that highlight that functionality, as well as more math and science templates.

Or perhaps she will focus on boosting the district’s fourth-grade proficiency scores, which are always a big challenge, she says. A series of Kidspiration templates could easily be developed to address those specific concepts. She has a few months to decide. Mostly, however, Knox is “just excited to find out how I’m going to use it,” she concludes after her few weeks of experience with the versatile software. “Kidspiration has just got it all!”

Graphical organizing program supports New York education standards, helping students learn to organize and plan for writing

Fourth grade students in Leah Floriano’s classroom at Iroquois Intermediate School in Elma, New York, use Kidspiration to build writing skills. Creative brainstorming and webbing activities help students visualize their ideas and get organized before they start the writing process. The result is better writing. Plus, Kidspiration helps Floriano align her curriculum to meet district and state standards.

Meeting standards with Kidspiration

Floriano was introduced to Kidspiration and Inspiration in a technology course as part of her master of education program. She immediately saw Kidspiration’s value for her students. Standards in the Iroquois Central School District call for the use of graphical organizers to help students learn to process, analyze, and organize information. Before discovering Kidspiration, Floriano’s students used paper and pencil to create webs and graphical organizers—a time-consuming and tedious process—but necessary to teach students about planning and organizing for writing.

During a student’s fourth grade year, the first round of state tests in language arts, math, and science are administered. Students are required to write essays for the English Language Arts (ELA) tests, which are partially evaluated on organization, clarity, and the presence of key story elements. “Pre-writing activities in Kidspiration are definitely a great preparation for the ELA test,” says Floriano.

Students enter Floriano’s classroom from third grade knowing how to write sentences and paragraphs, but they have not yet mastered the skills needed to develop an entire story with a beginning, middle, and end. Floriano soon found that creating webs and other graphical organizers in Kidspiration helped students learn how to incorporate and organize all the elements of a story before they began their writing.

Taking a chance with Kidspiration

In her !rst year teaching fourth grade, Floriano was anxious to make a good impression with an upcoming lesson that her principal, Donna Eno, would observe. Although she had never used Kidspiration with her students, Floriano decided to put the visual learning program to the test during the observation.

Leah Floriano’s fourth grade students create Kidspiration diagrams to brainstorm and organize their thoughts before they start to write.

In preparation for the class, Floriano created a Kidspiration web with an overview of a story the class had recently read. On the day of the observation, she read the story to the class, showed them the diagram, and explained how she created it in Kidspiration. Students gathered around the computer as Floriano demonstrated how to use Kidspiration and showed students some of the symbols in the library. To help them understand the steps of creating a graphical organizer, Floriano did a “talk-aloud,” talking the students through the thinking process of creating a diagram in Kidspiration. She solicited suggestions from the students, and the class worked together to create a new web with details from a story they had recently read.

After a break, students returned to the classroom to take turns working individually with Kidspiration on the classroom’s five computers. They created graphical organizers about themselves, illustrating their interests and describing their lives. Then students used the webs they had created to give them ideas for the introductory letters they were writing to their pen pals in Virginia. “Students love using the computer, but this was their !rst experience using it for anything other than educational games,” states Floriano. “They had a great time using Kidspiration, and thought of it as fun, not work.”

In the end, the students’ projects were a huge success. Not only had Floriano introduced her students to a new way of organizing their thoughts and ideas, but she had made a positive impression on Principal Eno during the process. “Floriano has done an excellent job of integrating technology into her instructional program,” says Eno. “She has aligned the curriculum to meet the New York State Standards with technology as an integral tool.”

Floriano recognizes the power of visual learning to help students who learn best visually. “I am a visual learner, and there must be visual learners in my classroom as well,” she says. “Kidspiration is a technology tool that children can use successfully and enjoy using at the same time. I can’t imagine teaching without it.”

Helping kids connect with reading and writing

Canby, Oregon. Kindergartners  in Canby, Oregon are writing their own books and taking them home to read to their parents. Kidspiration is helping the students use pictures and symbols to paraphrase the stories their teacher reads in class, so they can “read” them to their parents after school.

“To help students learn to read and write, we need to get them excited and help them make a personal connection with the story,” explains Jennifer Gingerich, district technology trainer for the Canby School District. The youngsters are getting extra reading and writing help from Kidspiration, a software program that students grades K-5 use for creative pre-writing exercises, for reading practice and a variety of other activities designed to build strong thinking skills.

Teachers rave about feature-rich software

The school district chose Kidspiration and several other programs to help its K-5 teachers use technology to encourage reading and writing skills. It’s all part of a schoolboard initiative to focus on literacy, funded by a grant from the state’s Department of Education. The grant allows the district to provide technology and staff development to support reading and writing at key benchmarks.

With nearly 400 copies of Kidspiration installed in the district’s "ve elementary schools, all teachers have access to the program—and they love it. “Kidspiration is a wonderful program for the many features that help students learn to read and write,” says Gingerich. “As I evaluated Kidspiration for the "rst time, I just kept saying ‘wow!’ as I discovered all the features geared specifically to help students learn to read and write. The SuperGrouper® tool, the picture-to-topic feature and speech support are just a few of the tools that make Kidspiration a great fit for K-5 students.”

John Gingerich, the district’s technology coordinator, says Kidspiration is a key part of encouraging teachers to integrate technology in their lessons. “Our teachers can creatively use the software throughout their curricula to create activities that provide students with a variety of ways to sharpen their skills in reading and writing,” he says. “Kidspiration is also easy to learn, which makes it a great program for our technology literacy project.”

Technology training focuses on literacy standards

To implement the software program and align it with standards, the district held a planning day for its technology integration team, a group consisting of one teacher from each grade level in each school. The teachers were shown how to teach using Kidspiration in their lessons. Afterward, they discussed the reading and writing benchmarks to be met during the next semester as part of the literacy challenge. Jennifer Gingerich followed up with a visit to each classroom, providing model lessons to help the teachers gain confidence in using technology as part of their instruction. She conducted some lessons in each school’s computer lab and used wireless handheld computers, purchased with grant funds, for others.

The lesson plans created in Kidspiration for kindergarten and "rst-grade classes leverage the value of visual learning. Students might be asked to "nd pictures that start with a certain letter of the alphabet, to finish patterns or to find rhyming words. In second- and third-grade classrooms, kids may write a letter to a friend, alphabetize words or retell a story’s sequence of events. Every activity is designed to help teachers integrate Kidspiration into lesson plans that align directly with literacy standards.

Using pictures to write their own books

In Patti Monte’s kindergarten classroom, the students have just listened to Monte read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Now Monte has the children mimic Brown Bear, asking them to name the animals they see, just like the bear. She then takes them to the computer lab, where each student uses Kidspiration to create a web diagram to represent animals they see.

First, the students type their names at the center of the web. Next, each selects a symbol of their favorite animal to represent themselves. Then they add pictures from the program’s library of animal symbols, using the picture-to-topic options to label each animal. Finally, Monte prints the paraphrased stories so the kindergartners can take them home to “read” to their families.

Gingerich says the students love using Kidspiration to visually repeat what they’ve learned while adding their own special symbols. “This activity helps to reinforce what the kids have read and to bring a part of themselves into what they are reading,” she says. “Making the connections between words and pictures is one of the biggest bene"ts to students.”

Kidspiration activity “What do you see” meets a variety of education standards and allows Kindergarteners to demonstrate their learning in a creative and fun way.

At Clairemont Elementary School in Decatur, Ga., kindergarteners enter a world of visual experiences, full of new opportunities to develop skills and learning patterns that will inspire life-long learning. Kindergarten teacher, Heather Borowski uses Kidspiration® 2.1 with a Promethean ActivBoard to provide interactive lessons, teach new information, practice key concepts and excite students about learning.

Kidspiration trade show presentation inspires media specialist to teach

While attending the 2004 Florida Education Technology Conference in Orlando, Borowski—a library media specialist at the time—watched a presentation of Kidspiration 2.1 on a Promethean ActivBoard. “My head was spinning as I watched the presentation on the exhibit hall floor,” says Borowski. “I felt strongly that my students had to have the opportunity to learn this way.”

After returning from the conference, Borowski was instrumental in convincing her principal to attend a presentation and consequently purchase ActivBoards for four classrooms. The school’s instructional computers were already equipped with Kidspiration 2 licenses.

Borowski was so captivated by the possibilities provided by a “21st Century Classroom” that she asked to transfer into the classroom as a teacher while continuing to mentor fellow teachers. Her principal agreed. The following year, Borowski moved into a kindergarten classroom equipped with four instructional computers and an interactive whiteboard.

Heather Borowski’s kindergarten students explore Kidspiration on an interactive whiteboard.

Visual learning and technology benefit all types of learners

Borowski’s classroom is comprised of a diverse mix of learners. Kidspiration meets the student’s needs, with features optimized for interactive whiteboards: toolbars that move to the bottom of the screen for easy access by students; and the ability to sketch symbols, draw links and write text directly on the whiteboard. Borowski believes the principles of visual learning are the key to helping her students learn. “Along with hearing words read aloud, the visual learning aspect of Kidspiration is helping my special needs students connect words with meaning,” says Borowski. “Plus, the tactile, kinesthetic nature of Kidspiration, where students get to physically move things around on the screen and associate actions with results, is great for all students at this age.”

Borowski likes Kidspiration for its intuitive interface, its integrated Picture and Writing Views, the 1,200 kid-friendly symbols organized into libraries, and her favorite: Symbol Maker. According to Borowski, at the beginning of the school year most of the students do not have the ability to draw symbols with a mouse, but they have no problems using a stylus to create their own symbols on the whiteboard.

During the first weeks of this school year, the students used Kidspiration for an introductory “all about me” activity. First, the class did a whole group exercise to learn about Kidspiration and to practice moving things around on the board. Then Borowski brought students individually to the whiteboard to draw pictures using Kidspiration’s Symbol Maker. “The students love using Kidspiration,” says Borowski. “It’s so bright and colorful and interactive. They can personalize their diagrams by drawing their own face or a dog that looks like their dog.”

Sharing Kidspiration with other educators

Other teachers in the school requested help from Borowski in integrating Kidspiration into the curriculum. She worked with a second-grade teacher to create a unit on community helpers that incorporated Kidspiration. Students began by brainstorming questions they wanted to answer as part of a KWL chart in Kidspiration. After gathering research, students created graphic organizers that answered their questions. “Students had a clear picture of how to organize their research,” Borowski adds. “And the outline version of their graphic organizer was a literal diving board for their writing.”

Borowski creates sorting and grouping activities as practice and assessment tools.

Students finished the project by completing their KWL charts and writing a book about the community helpers. According to Borowski, the second-grade teacher was thrilled with the lesson’s success and repeated it again the following year. “She loved it,” said Borowski, “the way Kidspiration helped her students to organize their knowledge, the way she could easily assess what they learned and the way it motivated her students.”

Kidspiration’s versatility and variety of learning benefits gave Borowski ideas for ways to use the software in her own classroom. She plans to use Kidspiration for letter and phonics recognition, rhyming words and other sorting and categorizing activities in a variety of subjects, such as sorting fruits and vegetables into SuperGrouper® categories. “Kindergarteners are fearless when it comes to technology; they do things intuitively,” says Borowski. “Kidspiration helps my students to take that natural ability and develop skills and learning techniques that will help them be successful throughout their lives.”

When teachers from Denver Public Schools put Inspiration® and Kidspiration® on the top of their technology wish list, district administrators discovered that the Inspiration Software® Comprehensive License Program was an easy, cost-effective and legally licensed way to put the visual learning software products at their fingertips. Now with the graphic organizers loaded on all instructional computers, teachers in grades K-12 are using visual learning across the curriculum to help students develop strong thinking and organizational skills and improve their academic performance.

Inspiration and Kidspiration Top Teachers’ “Wish” List

More than 250 teachers from Denver Public Schools went to the Colorado Technology in Education Conference looking for new ways to use technology to improve teaching and learning for the city’s 73,000 students. In follow-up workshops with many of these teachers, they expressed a strong interest in using Inspiration and Kidspiration in their classrooms and schools.

Educational Technology Specialist Lee Hayward says it is rare to find teachers agreeing on the same new instructional tool, but when his district’s teachers talk about using Inspiration and Kidspiration, their enthusiasm is apparent.

“I love Kidspiration for grades K to 5 because it is so incredibly versatile,” says Erin Daly, a technology teacher at Schenck Elementary School. “I adapt any curricular lesson to use Kidspiration. Visual organizers are available for math, science, language arts or social studies. It is an essential tool in my tech lab.”

Many Denver teachers were already using Inspiration and Kidspiration before the movement for districtwide adoption grew out of the education technology conference. In the past, individual schools bought single copies of Inspiration and Kidspiration for classrooms and computer labs and the district purchased a copy for each elementary school. However, Hayward says, “We really wanted students using the software at all grade levels and across the curriculum.”

Offering visual learning software across the district

Denver Public Schools was looking for an easy, cost-effective and legally licensed way to make the visual learning software products available to all teachers and students. When Hayward learned about the Inspiration Software Comprehensive License Program, he decided that it would meet the district’s needs, offering an easy way to purchase Inspiration and Kidspiration with the confidence that all copies are properly licensed.

When the Educational Technology Department had a discussion about how to spend some Title IID money, it decided to pursue purchase of the comprehensive license from Inspiration Software. This was an exception for Denver schools, says Hayward. As a district that is managed at the buildinglevel, decisions about purchasing instructional materials are normally made by each school. In fact, Inspiration Software is Denver Public Schools’ only comprehensive instructional software license. “This is not normally something we do,” he adds.

Hayward worked with Inspiration Software to come up with a “Good Faith Estimate” of the number of instructional computers in the district—the comprehensive volume licensing program doesn’t require an exact count of computers. He was pleased to learn that the district’s current licenses for Inspiration and Kidspiration were considered when the pricing for the license was determined. Also because the comprehensive licensing program is reviewed and adjusted for new computers just once annually, Hayward only needs to place one order per year with Inspiration Software. He now saves valuable time that in the past might have been spent getting approval for and processing multiple orders throughout the school year. The district will also get special pricing on future upgrades.

“Inspiration Software worked closely with us and so it was easy to offer our teachers and students access to these valuable learning tools,” Hayward says. “We anticipate that it will be easy to manage the licenses.”

Developing customized professional development for Inspiration and Kidspiration

Hayward and his colleagues knew that purchasing the comprehensive license was only the first step in encouraging the use of visual learning throughout the district. The software was installed on computers throughout Denver’s 148 schools over a two-month period. With the software, teachers received a twopage “Quickie” tip sheet to help them quickly learn to use Inspiration and Kidspiration.

Hayward and his team then used Inspiration Software’s professional development scripts to develop in-service training on visual learning teaching strategies. These workshops are being conducted throughout the district as requested by principals and teachers.

“With the ease of managing the Inspiration Software comprehensive license, we were able to put our time and energy into ensuring that our teachers have adequate professional development on using Inspiration and Kidspiration to support instruction,” adds Hayward.

“Great things” to come with Inspiration and Kidspiration

Hayward says that because Inspiration and Kidspiration were number one on the Denver teachers’ wish list, enthusiasm for using the software in the classroom is the highest he has ever seen for a technology learning tool. Teachers in grades K-12 are using the software to support teaching and learning, and visual learning is becoming an important part of the district’s instructional program at all levels. For example, Elma Ruiz, a member of the district’s central literacy team and coordinator of the Reading First grant, says they have added Inspiration and Kidspiration to the district’s list of approved literacy software.

“We have only just begun to see the benefits. We anticipate great things as the school year progresses,” concludes Hayward.

"Kidspiration's Word Guide comes in very handy for my emerging writers. In both Writing and Picture Views, across all subject areas, it helps my students become more independent in attaining and using new vocabulary."
Ara Ryherd, Computer Teacher
Stephen D. McSweeney High School
Bronx, NY

"Kidspiration 3 is phenomenal! Kidspiration 2 users are going to be blown away with the enhancements. This new version will be invaluable in the classroom."
Sandra Hines, Director of Instructional Technology
Burleson ISD, TX

"I love all the new math tools! The addition of the Math View in Kidspiration gives teachers an opportunity to provide an alternative to traditional math manipulatives. It is an effective and efficient learning tool. Students benefit from using a digital learning tool that is intuitive and easy to control."
Karen M. Ortiz, Technology Integration Specialist
Graland Country Day School
Denver, CO

"Kidspiration 3 is a more complete tool. It has always been terrific for language arts, science, and social studies. Now, it includes math in a way no other software does. Kidspiration 3 bridges the gap between concrete manipulatives and abstract thinking."
Adrianne Hunt, National Faculty
Lesley University
Cambridge, MA

"I love every aspect of Kidspiration's new Math View! Many schools are struggling to improve math and reading test scores – Kidspiration 3 is one tool that can help with both!"
Muggs Murphy, Gifted/Talented Teacher
Burris Elementary School
Mitchell, IN

"Kidspiration 3 is more versatile and user-friendly than previous versions. I am impressed with the new Word Guide and the variety and number of useful ready-made activities. The new visual math tools are great for kinesthetic learners and well-suited for today’s technology-oriented students. "
Denise Friedman, Teacher
Hemby Bridge Elementary School
Indian Trail, NC