The Webbing Tool provides a free-form graphic organizer for activities that ask students to pursue hypertextual thinking and writing. The tool provides a quick way for students to trace out options and rearrange connections. Students can use the Webbing Tool to analyze readings as well as a prewriting activity and flowcharting tool. Students can drag the circle or box shapes representing their ideas to arrange any layout and relationship that they want. Each layer on the chart will have a different color border for the shapes that you choose. Customized versions of the tool, which include additional instructions and more focused choices, are included with some lessons.

Visit this interactive tool at: http://interactives.mped.org/webbing127.aspx.

ReadWriteThink Lessons That Use This Tool

Book Report Alternative: Hooking a Reader with a Book Cover (6-8)
In this lesson, students select a book to read based only on its cover art. After reading the book, they analyze the cover and use an interactive tool to create a new cover for it.

Choose Your Own Adventure: A Hypertext Writing Experience (6-8)
Working in groups, students will read and analyze Choose Your Own Adventure Stories in text or hypertext format and brainstorm to develop setting, characters, and beginning plots for their own adventures. Working in smaller groups and finally individually, students will develop Choose Your Own Adventure Story Web sites.

Delicious, Tasty, Yummy: Enriching Writing with Adjectives and Synonyms (3-5)
This lesson for students in grades 3 and 4 teaches them about adjectives and synonyms. Students work in small groups using webs and form poems as their primary tools for developing adjectives and synonyms to describe everyday items. Thesauri, webbing tools, alphabet organizers, and picture books are used to help students identify, organize, and modify descriptors.

Exploring Cause and Effect Using Expository Texts About Natural Disasters (3-5)
Understanding the structure of expository texts is an essential aspect of literacy. Students should therefore be introduced to these texts at an early age. By guiding elementary-age students to discover cause-and-effect relationships in books about natural disasters, this lesson helps improve overall comprehension.

Focusing Reader Response Through Vocabulary Analysis (6-8)
Students suggest words that they associate with a novel they have recently read, ranging from details about the plot to feelings about a character; then, small groups of students arrange the collected words into at least four categories, that they then present and explain to the class.

Gaining Background for the Graphic Novel Persepolis: A WebQuest on Iran (9-12)
To prepare students for reading the graphic novel Persepolis, this lesson uses a WebQuest to focus students’ research efforts on finding reliable information about Iran before and during the Islamic Revolution. In groups, students research and then present information on aspects of Iran such as politics, religion, and culture.

Investigating the Holocaust: A Collaborative Inquiry Project (6-8)
As students progress though this inquiry project, they explore a variety of resources—texts, images, sounds, photos, and other artifacts—as they learn about the Holocaust. Working collaboratively, they investigate the materials, prepare response to share orally with the class, and produce a topic-based newspaper to complete their research.

No More Bullying: Understanding the Problem, Building Bully-Free Environments (6-8)
In this lesson, students construct an understanding of bullying by focusing on the causes, prevalence, consequences, and reasons it is unacceptable. They examine local incidents of bullying, report their findings, and explore solutions. Students synthesize their knowledge by planning the first steps of a multifaceted Bullying Intervention Campaign.

Teaching Student Annotation: Constructing Meaning Through Connections  (9-12)
Believing that the meaning of text lies in the teacher's notes, not within themselves, students often fail to realize that their experiences and understandings are just as important in constructing meaning. Through annotations, students begin to find ways to make personal connections with text and grow in confidence as they work with text.

Textmasters: Shaking Up Textbook Reading in Science Classrooms (6-8)
Students will become masters at comprehending content area texts with this spin on literature circles. The Textmasters strategy invites students to adopt roles that promote collaborative learning.

Weaving the Threads: Integrating Poetry Annotation and Web Technology (6-8)
This project engages students in meaningful research using poetry as a focal point. Students identify words and phrases in a poem by a Native American and in the process, learn about Native American culture and history. Students create a Web site using the poem as a "launching" space that takes readers into various explanations of words and phrases.

Writing Alternative Plots for Robert C. O’Brien’s Z for Zachariah (6-8)
The science fiction novel, Z for Zachariah, by Robert C. O’Brien is full of moral dilemmas. As a culminating activity for this novel, students write alternative endings for the novel based around the important decisions made by Ann Burden, the main character.