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Sketchnoting for Understanding How can students better visualize concepts that they read or hear? My science teaching colleague and I used to run into a dilemma at the end of the year. The science notebooks we were using were a great idea, but the stuff inside was not very good. The kids were drawing their observations, but the notes did not have deep meaning. We went looking for strategies that would help students better frame their ideas. Mind maps weren’t cutting it and vocabulary lists were rigid and stale. In August of 2015, a teacher led workshop introduced my colleague and me to the concept of sketchnotes. Learning how to incorporate drawing and visualizations into my students’ note-taking practice became my professional target for the year. We were onto something…. It is with this goal of learning and incorporating sketchnotes into my educational practice that I witnessed a deeper understanding of concepts emerge in my students over the course of the year.
What is sketchnoting?
Mike Rohde, in his book The Sketchnote Handbook, introduces the key elements of sketchnoting. These include: - a title in the form of a banner - connectors such as arrows - containers which include boxes - separators or dividers - hierarchy in the form of different font size or color - representational drawings called visual vocabulary These structures help students to curate ideas from information that they read in text, hear in lectures or watch on video clips, rather than jotting every word down onto the paper. Sketchnotes are more of a sieve than a trap. Through this filtering of ideas, meaning can be created and a foundation for cognitive structures can grow and develop. While traditional note taking stresses word capturing, the sketchnoting techniques emphasize synthesis of ideas. (Figures 1, 2, 3)
Why?
First, sketchnotes are fun. Students enjoy drawing and doodling, which provides an outlet for their creativity. Secondly, students need a framework to help make sense of the information required for learning. In the book, Getting to “Got It!”, Betty Garner describes these mental configurations as cognitive structures. These foundations help students identify similarities and differences, represent information through symbols and use logical reasoning structures to generate new ideas. (Garner, B. 2007 pg. 2-3 ) Sketchnoting is one tool that students can use to visually represent their understanding. One student commented on using sketchnotes: “Pictures...pictures, pictures, pictures because I like to draw pictures and when you draw pictures, you understand more of what the page is saying.” 14 EARCOS Triannual Journal
Practicing
How can I teach students to draw if I am not an artist? I believe that early in our lives, we all like to draw. Since sketchnoting is a technique like reading or writing, it can be taught and learned. In order to gain insight into what my students were going through while learning to sketchnote, I sketch-noted during faculty meetings and conferences to synthesize my ideas. I showed my students my notes, explained my challenges, developed possible solutions for future sketchnoting and we learned together. By being vulnerable and sharing my sketchnotes, students could see my growth and progress. This helped challenge my students’ fixed mindset that people are born with the ability to draw and replaced it with a growth mindset. Seeing that they could process information through pictures and become better at sketchnoting over time helped rekindle a love of drawing that many of my students had lost.
Reflection
Practice and reflection are important steps towards mastering a new skill. About half way through the year I provided some prompts to help students reflect and create a mini-goal for a sketchnote element that they wanted to refine further before the end of the year. A student stated: “I’ve noticed a lot of picture growth and I think that I improved with adding some of my own ideas and representations of things. Also, in the recent sketchnote, I noticed that I’ve been using words to explain a lot less, and started using (more) pictures, arrows, etc. to communicate.”
Keeping the fire alive
This year, I want my former students to be mentors to my current ones. During some of the 30-minute academic advisory periods in August and September, I will have last year’s students that really liked sketchnoting share their skills with my new students. This will help my new students hear first hand about how sketchnoting can be fun and exciting. On the flip side, I would like to see the older students transfer sketchnoting to other classes and have an opportunity to teach others. I look forward to seeing what happens! For further insight into sketchnoting, some helpful websites include: Sketchnote Army: http://sketchnotearmy.com/ Verbal to Visual: http://www.verbaltovisual.com/ The Doodle Revolution: http://sunnibrown.com/doodlerevolution/ By Peter A. Dohrenwend The American School in Japan Middle School Science Teacher pdohrenwend@asij.ac.jp
