We're Big Fans: World Sketchnote Day 2016

Source: Sketchnote Army

Sketchnoting plays an integral part in our curricula, and we incorporate them whenever we can to help learners connect to content. This personal form of note-taking allows students to use the visual thinking process to design information in real-time through words and images. So it is with great pleasure that we recognize the inaugural, kick-off event for World Sketchnote Day. Follow the day on Twitter using the hashtag #SNDay2016 to see some amazing examples.

We've been huge fans of the process and have witnessed its extraordinary appeal to our students. While we encourage them to use sketchnotes whenever they choose, we often hear cheers of delight when we make it an active part of a lesson.

Source: ASIDE 2016

Our students understand that the visual cues in the sketchnote process help them connect to the material and enhance their recall of the content. Visually engaging with the information broadens connections and opens up the design process to think about the relationships between text and image.

We've watched the evolution in how students use sketchnotes to visually organize their information and to create a structural framework for the content they are learning.

There are lots of resources available to educators, and one of the most comprehensive is Kathy Shrock's guide to using Sketchnoting In The Classroom.

For a quick reference to help our students, we developed the one-page cheat sheet in this post as a handy guide to keep in their binders. Click here to download the PDF.

For other posts about sketchnoting in the classroom, please see:

• 2nd Graders Go Wild For Sketchnotes
• Sketchnotes - Visual-notetaking In 3rd Grade
• 4th Grade Sketchnotes, Visual Mapping, And Primary Sources
• Sketchnotes: Visual Mapping Ideas
• Sketchnotes and Visual Thinking - A Different Way Of Note-taking

Ban Highlighting, Blackout Instead – Poetry Nonfiction Using Notability

Source: Bit Rebels

If your students are like ours, when they pick up a highlighter to underscore what is important in the text they are reading, they highlight just about everything. We might as well give them the information copied on yellow, pink, or orange paper. Part of the problem is they don’t “clean read” first to understand the context for the content. They just highlight away to the point of distraction.

Source: ASIDE, 2014

The concept of finding select phrases to support the topic does not even occur to them. This exacerbates the problem, leading to paper or electronic notes covered in color. Everything becomes important. They fail to select the main idea and miss supportive evidence for it.

Recently, we started to experiment with the blackout technique that is often used in creating poetry from newspapers and other texts, and we banned highlighting. To our surprise, the blackout process had additional benefits that we did not consider at first.

Source: ASIDE, 2014

In their search for the perfect word choice, students needed to reread the content for the finished product to make sense. In other words, they had to stick with the text. This method alone opened up opportunities for them to think about the information. It was anything but random in selecting the right words or phrases to make their nonfiction poem work.

The process was simple. The students download a PDF from our website and opened it using the app Notability on their iPads. This allowed them to carefully revise selected content, proofread for continuity, and ensure a poetic flow of information before they started the blackout process.

Source: ASIDE, 2014

Of course, the anticipation in eliminating everything else was the fun part. It was an excellent way for them to engage with the text, understand the content, and have a blast doing it.

For other resources on using the blackout technique, see:

• Tip of the Week: Blackout Poetry
• iPads X Black Out Poems
• Austin Kleon - Newspaper Blackout Book Trailer
• Austin Kleon - Taking A Peek Inside "The Invention Machine"

4th Grade Sketchnotes, Visual Mapping, And Primary Sources

Source: 4th Grade Sketchnotes, ASIDE, 2013

Using sketchnotes with our students this year exceeded our expectations. Whether it was with second graders studying communities, or third graders sketchnoting about the rainforest, the results were the same. With our fourth grade, we used sketchnotes to categorize the types of primary sources. The students displayed the same excitement in collecting notes in a different way that included images as visual clues.
 
We started with an introduction to the three basics of sketchnoting, which are to create an organizational structure for the content, to use a font hierarchy to elevate the importance of text, and to draw simple sketches to connect to the notes. We stressed that each person's sketchnotes would be different, because it had to do with an individual's point of view. It was a personal approach to their way of making the information memorable. They loved the idea of choice in designing the content that best suited them.

Source: 4th Grade Sketchnotes, ASIDE, 2013

It was no surprise to see them jump right into the sketchnote process. It was equally amazing to see how this method once again reinforced the learning. The students' recall about primary sources was evident throughout the semester, long after their sketchnotes were completed.

They not only remembered the various categories that primary sources fall into, such as published, unpublished, oral, and visual, but they also understood the wide range of places to find information. It opened their eyes to over 70 types of primary sources that can help with historical research.

Source: 4th Grade Sketchnotes, ASIDE, 2013

As a culminating piece to this lesson, the students bring to class their own primary sources from home. Again, it's their choice, and the types of items include birth certificates, library cards, trophies, diaries, photographs, movie tickets, and more.

For fun, we make believe we are at a conference of historians, 100 years later, who are trying to figure out what these items actually tell us. The kids get a kick out of it. At the same time, it makes them realize how difficult it can be to decipher information depending on the type of primary source.

Since we have a school archive, we also take the students to see some of the older artifacts and documents about the school. They are fascinated by the memorabilia and try to use the skills they learned to decode what they are seeing. It makes it real.

Source: 4th Grade Sketchnotes, ASIDE, 2013

For other examples of sketchnoting, please see our other posts.

Sketchnotes – Visual Note-taking In 3rd Grade

Source: 3rd Grade Sketchnotes, ASIDE, 2013

We’ve written a number of posts about sketchnotes, and this year we pushed to include them as part of the note-taking process on multiple grade levels. Most recently, our third graders practiced sketchnoting to visually map out their understanding of the rain forest.

As with other age levels, the first plunge into using this new way of note-taking needed some instruction to help them understand the process. Their initial reluctance soon gave way to enthusiasm as they realized they were free to make decisions as to how to arrange the information to best suit their ways of learning.

Source: 3rd Grade Sketchnotes, ASIDE, 2013

It was amazing to see how each student used a particular style and organization to portray his or her knowledge of the topic.

Source: ASIDE, 2013

We developed a quick guide for the students to introduce the basic shapes to drawing just about anything with a few simple lines or shapes. It also included four different ways to represent people. Instead of using simple stick figures, they learned to draw "I," "star," "A," or "bean" people. Like the sketchnotes done by our 2nd graders, we talked about the organization and layout of ideas to help make their understanding of the facts as clear as possible.

With personal note-taking, there is a lot of leeway in the selection of information that lends to the personalization of ideas and content. Unlike other forms of note-taking, sketchnotes are not scripted in a certain way. They are much more organic, personal and deliberate.

Source: 3rd Grade Sketchnotes, ASIDE, 2013

In the end, the students demonstrated a strong understanding of the facts, and they took equal care in how they wanted to portray their ideas.

2nd Graders Go Wild For Sketchnotes

Source: 2nd Grade Student - ASIDE, 2013

We are so excited about the sketchnotes in this post by our second grade students. Our innovative colleague and friend, Stefani Rosenthal, was thoroughly intrigued by the process of visual note-taking and wanted to try it to see how this would help reinforce her students' understanding of different types of communities. Her forward-thinking approach and willingness to collaborate in trying something new paid off in helping her students learn.

Without making it too complicated, we gave the students the basics about using words, images and design to arrange their pages. Essentially, we wanted them to understand how the verbal and visual components worked together to explain the information. Since this was their first attempt at visual note-taking, it was important to give the students an organizational structure. Even though they were given some guidelines, we provided plenty of options. What we did not want was a strict set of rules to make the students do it all the same way.

Source: 2nd Grade Student - ASIDE, 2013

Visual note-taking is personal. Choice and decision-making as to what makes sense for each way of learning are keys to the process. It defeats the purpose if the outcome is scripted.

Design and layout were up to the students. It was important for them to take ownership of the information and to display it in a way that made sense to map out their knowledge.

Source: 2nd Grade Student - ASIDE, 2013

Perhaps the most amazing thing to watch was the sheer quietness that overtook the room as they worked on their pages. You could have heard a pin drop. The kids' concentration on the process of creating their pages was truly astounding.

At the end of the lesson, they were so excited to discuss their work, and they easily shared their ideas to demonstrate their understanding of what they learned. They not only loved the visual note-taking process but also had fun doing it, and the content stuck.

The best part was that the students went home that day talking about sketchnoting. Once again, we couldn’t ask for more as teachers.

Sketchnotes: Visual Notetaking Made Simple

Source: Sketcho Frenzy

We’ve had a lot of interest from teachers at our school about incorporating sketchnotes into their curricula, and we wanted to offer a place to start learning just how simple the process of visual note-taking can be. As mentioned in our previous post, Sketchnoting builds a connection between verbal and visual components. It is a personal form of note-taking that activates the brain in the process much the same as doodling.

Claudine Delfin is the author of the Sketcho Frenzy website that she began as a creative project to help people learn through visual note-taking. In her straightforward video Sketcho Frenzy: The Basics of Visual Note-taking, Delfin explains the fundamentals of text hierarchy, words as images, and the structure of sketchnoting.



We highly recommend visiting Sketcho Frenzy. It provides a wealth of short video tutorials on many different aspects of the sketchnote process including typography, drawing peeps, tree diagrams, and more.