Webbing with Students
Purpose:
Overview:
Visual Organizer
Procedure:
Webbing is a process to capture diverse ideas and to build a project over time. It allows for additional ideas or comments without dismissing earlier thoughts.
When a teacher uses a web to capture lots of thoughts from a group of children, she is demonstrating “brainstorming” in a concrete way. Webbing is very visual. Sometimes children and adults don’t think in a 1-2-3 step linear way. It also communicates to a child that every idea is valuable and has a place in the plan and that there are many “right” ideas and possibilities for exploration. It visualizes grouping and connections made in the mind.
There are two main steps:
- Generating ideas or comments (brainstorming) and
- Grouping related comments.
Webbing to capture children’s ideas is usually done during a large group time. Webs can also be done by individuals and can be done over time, with people adding their parts to the web as new ideas occur.
A topic web is one of the most popular uses for a web. In a topic web, teachers record children’s responses to things like:
- What do the children already know?
- What would they like to find out?
- To whom do they think they could talk?
- What places could they visit to help them find out more?
Materials:
Chart Paper and Markers
Variations:
What can early care professionals web? Anything!
- Characteristics of a child
- Interests of a child
- Observations of or about a child
- Children’s interests
- Domain-specific ideas related to a topic
- Activities to do related to a topic/interest
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