Teacher’s Notes
Lesson 11: Organizing Ideas
Background Information
In today’s lesson, you will explain how to organize ideas and write a main idea statement in preparation for drafting. The Tech Tool featured in this lesson, bubbl.us, is discussed in more detail below.
Bubbl.us
Bubbl.us ( is a free online tool that allows you to brainstormideas and organize them in a visual representation by creating idea maps.
You will want to acquaint yourself with the site before using it with your students. The best way to learn about this tool is to create a mind map and play with the features. Begin by placing a topic in the center bubble, or parent node. This is the focus of your mind map. Everything in your map is in some way connected to this initial topic.
Add to or modify the content of your mind map by using the buttons on each bubble. The Help window in the lower right corner of the screen explains what each button is for. Ideas that you add to the parent node are called child nodes. You can add as many child nodes as you want by clicking the New Sibling button on the right side of the bubble.
You can continue to add layers of content, developing a chart very similar to a family tree, by adding new child nodes to the existing child nodes. You can also edit this content by changing the colors of the bubbles, rearranging the nodes, and ordering the nodes according to their importance or according to their steps in the development process. When you are finished, you can print your map or save it as an image and insert it into a document.
Lesson Plan
Objectives for Lesson 11: Students will use their research notes to create an outline or mind map to organize information. Students will write a main idea statement to explain the topic and focus of their research.
Introducing the lesson
•Review information from Lesson 10 by having students define the term plagiarism and by listing the causes of and the ways to avoid plagiarism.
•Introduce today’s lesson by talking about organizational habits. Quickly review some of the organizational techniques that benefit students’ study life, such as using agenda books to record homework and due dates and using folders and notebooks to keep class materials organized. Relate these organizational study techniques to organizational writing strategies. For example, using organizational study techniques helps a student remember things, and using organizational writing strategies helps a student prioritize ideas.
Presenting the lesson
Use the information provided in the slides to explain how to organize one’s writing with outlines or mind maps as well as how to create a main idea statement for a research project. Following are some possible ways to extend the discussion.
•As you talk about labeling notecards and organizing them into groups, practice doing so by using student examples from a previous class or by using the notecards of a student in your current class. You might give students a few minutes to practice going through this process with their own notes.
•Create an outline together in class. Use information from a text you read recently or from a topic that all of your students are familiar with, such as class routines or rules or school functions. Show students how to use Roman numerals, letters, and numbers to create layers for their content.
•Help students understand that their organizational plans aren’t set in stone. As they write, students might have to revise their original plans. Students should understand that change is a normal part of the writing process, and they should be open to making changes.
•Demonstrate how to use bubbl.us. You could use the content from the outline that you just created as a class as the information to fill your mind map. During the demonstration, allow students to come to the teacher workstation to add content to the map.
•Help students understand that their main idea statements will keep their final products focused. Practice using the steps outlined in the presentation (that is, [1] research question, [2]what I learned, and [3] main idea statement) to create possible main idea statements based on a particular student’s research.
Talk About It
Use the questions to continue reiterating the importance of staying organized during the research and writing processes. Make sure students understand that organization is important regardless of the product they are creating—a paper, presentation, speech, letter, podcast, or other form.
Your Turn
In this activity, students will organize the main ideas from their notecards into categories. A student can do this in many ways. One possibility is included in the presentation, which provides students with a sample list of main ideas from a student’s notecards; they will organize the main ideas into categories and give each category a heading. You might discuss the differences in student responses and help students understand the validity of each of the different ways of grouping the ideas. General ways to organize main ideas or events categorically and thematically can include grouping them according to chronological order or causes, effects, and solutions.
If students need additional support in the activity, you can show them the second Your Turn slide, which gives a frame for each answer, or the Possible Responses slide, which shows complete suggested answers.
Following Up on the Lesson
•Ask students to create an outline, mind map, or graphic organizer showing the steps of the research process that they have completed up to this point.
•Schedule time for students to use thebubbl.us Web site.
•Practice creating outlines or maps from informational texts you have read in class. Help students see the intentional organization that the author used when writing the passage.
•If you have student models of research projects from past years, project a few of them on the board and read them with your students. Assess the work based only on organization. Help students see how the organizing step is evident in a finished product.
Research Strand
At this point, students will need time to think about and plan the organization of their final projects. You might encourage students to choose a paper, presentation, speech, letter, podcast, or another authentic form as a final product. Regardless of the format, clear organization will lead to a more polished final product. You might offer students a choice in how they organize (outline, mind map, or graphic organizer), but insist that organization is not an optional step in the process. Conduct conferences with students to go over their plans and their main idea statements.
Differentiated Experiences
Challenge
Offer students the opportunity to create a new method of organizing their ideas that makes sense to them and that suits their writing needs.
Extra Support
Allow students to use images and words to organize their thoughts. Spend one-on-one time with students who need extra help to make sure they are able to organize their ideas. With a good plan in place, these students will be much more successful in completing their drafts independently.
PLEASE NOTE
Some of the Web sites discussed in this lesson may require a student to register or create an account in order to use the featured online tools. Please remind students never to give personal information on a site without a parent’s or guardian’s permission.Also, Web sites can change frequently, both in content and functionality. Before sending students to a suggested Web site, you may want to preview the site and confirm the provided instruction still aligns with the content and navigational features of the site.
Original content Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Additions and changes to the original content are the responsibility of the instructor.
Writing and Research in a Digital Age1Level One Teacher’s Notes