Using a Digital Graphic Organizer as a Pre-writing Strategy

A digital graphic organizer that is very beneficial for elementary students as a pre-writing strategy is Popplet lite. I used popplet lite to create a concept map about a personal narrative. The main idea of the concept map is Disney World. Then it had 5 ideas branching out of Disney World describing my summer vacation. I then listed my favorite ride, food, characters and then the ocean. Having this concept map can help the students be creative when writing. By students making the concept map it will help them with their ideas as they are putting these ideas down with pictures and text. 

Popplet Lite is a great app to make a concept map. Students are able to have as many boxes as they want. Inside the boxes they can can add text, draw their own picture, or access pictures from the library or even take a picture of a drawing they already did. However, with the free version of Popplet Lite you can not get pictures from the web. If necessary, you can buy Popplet Lite for $4.99 and then get pictures from the web. Once the popplet (concept map) is finished you can share the popplet by exporting it by emailing as a PDF, emailing as JPEG, or saving it as a JPEG. This app is very easy for students to create and for them to express their ideas in an organized way. 

I envision teaching writing using traditional and new literacies by having students to using storyboards. Allowing the students to still traditionally write the narration, sketch a picture, and then choose from a media list for each page. To me I think using both traditional and new literacies is going engage the students more when it comes to writing. Using storyboards can help the student be creative and organized with their thoughts. 

Below is the Popplet I made as an example: