So Many Ways to Organize

Grade Level: 1st
Common Core Standard for Language Arts: Language Standards K-5; 5a (Sort words into categories (e.g., colors, clothing) to gain a sense of concepts the categories represent)

Lesson Idea:  Categorize various animals (i.e., farm animals, house animals, wild animals).  Provide children with a list of animals and as a class, using bubbl.us, put into distinctive categories.  Students and teacher could further discuss that these are broad categories and could anyone provide examples of instances where certain animals could cross over into other categories. 

Please see below for an example of how this concept map could look.

Reflection:  I LOVED bubbl.us!!!  I found it extremely easy to use and very user friendly.  I just typed in the URL and was good to go.  I had no trouble figuring out how to use the site; it was very basic and everything that was needed was on one page.  I also enjoyed that the concept bubbles could change colors as well as their text color.  I liked that if a "parent bubble" had offspring, the offspring were colors that were very similiar/in the same hue to parent.  I thought this would allow for a good visual to show the relationship. 
I did do a little more playing around and liked that you could connect various offpring bubbles using the "link" button that pops up when you scroll over the bubbles.  I also liked the fact that the lines connecting each of the bubbles could be labeled, if that was something you wished to do.  Overall, I found it easy to use and would highly recommend if someone is interested in creating concept maps.