I just discovered and started to play with a web-based application called Creately, which has been kind of fun. Here I will model one potential application of this program with a literacy exercise I will be using with my students this week.

My students will be reading this brief article, How Mountains Are Formed, from Universe Today. The literacy objective is for them to identify the main idea and summarize the article using a bubble map technique on Creately.

The text is pretty low complexity and very neatly structured, so I don’t think my students will have a difficult time with it. The extension will be adding additional details from their research to include on their map, such as examples and features of each type of mountain formation.

First, students will be asked to do an initial reading of the text. We begin by ‘reading around the text’: looking at the title, images and their captions and any bold or italicized print. After briefly discussing predictions, students will number their paragraphs and independently read their text.

The text has nine paragraphs and a reference section. The last three paragraphs are not particularly relevant to the text, and I will guide the students into excluding them from our bubble map before beginning.

After a brief discussion on the ‘main idea’ and citing where it is found in the text, I’ll have students begin their maps by centering this main idea.

Then students will analyze the next paragraph for key details, and create a new connection to the main idea on their bubble map.

Students will continue to identify the key details in each of the remaining paragraphs.

Then draw lines to connect these details to the main idea on their graphic.

As an extension exercise, students will be given additional texts from which they will continue their graphic by finding and adding examples and special features of the identified types of mountain formations.

Students could use this graphic as a study tool or a drafting device for a more formalized writing assignment.