It's Getting a Little Sketchy In Here

👀 🧠

Let's first talk briefly about the power of visible thinking. 

Learning is the consequence of thinking. Expecting students to think deeply can be a challenge. How exactly should we expect our students to do this? What does it mean to think? How do we know what or how they're thinking about something if we can't see their thoughts? When we give our students specific tools to help them better structure and deploy their own thinking, learning outcomes improve. When we help them build, connect, and refine their thinking in more overt (visible) ways, we are essentially helping them to develop their metacognitive skills, which leads to better thinking. Visible thinking routines provide a window into what students understand and how they are understanding it. As teachers, this offers us an opportunity to be intentional about how we plan and adjust our learning experiences to help our learners dig deeper into content, and hear and see each other's questions, insights, and perspectives so that we can support the development their thinking habits and refine their thinking as needed.

There are a plethora of ways to make thinking visible and we will explore many of them in The Hive this year. One of the ways we recently asked students to process information visually, was through a sketchnoting exercise related to the pollination process. Sketchnoting is a form of visual note-taking where students (or really anyone) listen to, synthesize, and visualize ideas about what they are learning about through a combination of picture drawings, diagrams, and text. Creating these visual notes during our exploration of the pollination process and then having students participate in a gallery walk of their classmates' sketchnotes, was an engaging way for students to share and build upon one another's knowledge, ultimately gaining a deeper understanding of this information.

This week's guest bloggers reflect on this experience. Enjoy.

Sketchnoting helps me understand what I am learning because drawing pictures about what I've learned makes sense to me.   - Lonnie

Sketchnoting helps me see how other people are thinking about what we are learning about.  - McLovin

Sketchnoting helps me learn because it's easier to learn with art. When I created my sketchnote about pollination, I felt like I was learning more.  - WowWriter

Sketchnoting helps me better understand what I am learning about and it allows other people to see how I visualize my learning and maybe it will help them.   - EarthySmurf

I think sketchnoting is helpful because drawing what you learned is sometimes easier than writing about it. For example, describing the crown of a hummingbird would be better to see in a drawing with arrows and labels.   - Horse321

Sketchnoting is a great to to explain what I learned because I enjoy drawing and showing my learning with pictures.   - Elizabeth_Schuyler

Sketchnoting helps me to blend (synthesize) my ideas and make sense of what I am learning. Doing this with pictures is helpful for me.   - Dream

Sketchnoting helps me understand my learning more because when I sketchnote, I am drawing pictures and writing words, not sentences. Sketchnoting makes learning really fun and makes a lot of sense to me.  - Koala333

Sometimes I forget what I learned, but when I create a sketchnote, it helps me remember it better. Also, I can easily look back at my sketchnotes to help me instead of reading pages of notes.  - Lightning24

Sometimes it's hard to understand words, but pictures can help with that. Drawing pictures with short text helps me visualize my learning.  - GoatLover

When I am learning about the process of things, Sketchnoting is really helpful. It helps me understand what I am learning because it's easier to understand a process through drawings and text.  - TheBeeGuy101

Sketchnoting helps me to remember what I am learning about. The drawings are really helpful. - Zombie

Sketchnoting helps me organize my crazy mind.  - Strawberry

Sketchnoting forces me to think more deeply about what I am learning.  - Giraffe

Sketchnoting helps me see what I am thinking in a different way. It's like talking pictures.  - Wolverine12

Sources:

“Project Zero's Thinking Routine Toolbox.” PZ's Thinking Routines Toolbox | Project Zero, http://www.pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines.

H, Sean. “What Is Visible Thinking Really?” Ideas Out There, 12 Apr. 2020, https://seanhamptoncole.wordpress.com/2017/09/02/what-is-visible-thinking-really/.

Making Thinking Visible - Harvard University. http://www.pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/makingthinkingvisibleEL.pdf.

Schwartz, Katrina. “Why Teachers Are so Excited about the Power of Sketchnoting - Mindshift.” KQED, 3 Nov. 2019, https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54655/why-teachers-are-so-excited-about-the-power-of-sketchnoting.