Graphic Organizers

I tried Popplet Lite. I really like this app. It was very easy to use. I'm sure my 4th graders would catch on quickly. It was easy to insert photos from the camera roll of the iPad. You can also draw sketches

 ( mine look pretty bleak, but you get the idea).it was easy to change colors, connect boxes, etc. 

 I tried two different types of organizers. One would be more of a topic brainstorm. I focused on the genre of personal narratives. It would be great if students had their own personal photos to use. You could also use photos from shared classroom experiences.  

The second organizer I made would be more of a story map. I arranged the boxes to show rising action, climax, etc. students could use words, sketches, or both to map out their story. I think it would work very well and would be motivating. It's easy to email as a PDF or JPEG. Popplets can also be saved to your camera roll. 

I wish this app had an audio recording feature like was mentioned in the article . I like the idea of students being able to tell their stories verbally and refer back to it. We do quite a bit of story "talk", but I've never experimented with recording and saving the story. We 

Since this is an app and not a website, it would work best if you had a class set of iPads. One of the other graphic organizers that I looked into was Lucidchart which is web-based. You set up an account which can be accessed from any device. 

Our 4th graders just finished creating graphic organizers for their persuasive essay presentations. We used a Mac application called Kidspiration. It works great!  Our media specialist helped our students work on these since we don't have a mobile Mac cart. It is not web-based, so kids do need to go back to their same computer to complete their work. The product prints very nicely and looks very professional!