Inspiration Jumbles: Organizing Pre-Written Notes
Create your own complete concept map and then going back and erase all of the links and scramble up all of the concepts. You could also have students create concept maps for certain units one year, and then you could rearrange those maps to be used as Jumbles for the next year’s students. Using Jumbles forces students to think critically and analyze different terms and themes as well as the relationships between them. Inspiration also has helpful tools like a spell checker.
Science: This week's weather, simple cycle (water cycle)
Reading/ Writing: Character, elephant grammar, thinking about stories
"Is it an Insect? (Primary School)
'Is it an Insect?" is a curricular unit on insects. To test the student's knowledge at
the end of the unit, Janet Frazier's class at Carus Elementary participated in an activity that provides an interactive way to categorize and organize information. In the "Is it an insect?" activity, students moved various symbols—dog, butterfly, spider, bee, and more—into two categories: "Insects" and "Not insects." You can download a copy of it: www.inspiration.com/insectactivity .
Essay Writing Template (Middle School, High School)
Inspiration is helpful in the planning stages of writing an essay or research paper. One idea is to create a template for a five-paragraph essay that enables students to add relevant details to create an essay. Pam Harrell shares her template at: http://4teachers.org/testimony/inspiration/5ParagraphEssay.htm
Disney Project (Middle School, High School)
In this example by Pam Herrill, Inspiration is used to help teach the concept of theme. Her students look at some Disney movies in class and discuss what themes are repeated in several of the movies. They then discuss how Disney portrays each theme. Here is a sample Disney illustration.
Recipe Book (Primary School, Middle School)
Pam Herrill helps students collaborate, Inspiration is used to help teach the concept of theme. Her students look at some Disney movies in class and discuss how Disney represents them. Read about her activity at: http://4teachers.org/testimony/inspiration/
