The Power of Sketchnoting is Real

The Power of Sketchnoting is Real-Brief Version

(This is the shortened version of this post. Once I started processing, the extended version came out a bit long! If you want to know ALL the details, it’s here for you.)

People have been buzzing about sketchnoting for a while now. I have dabbled with it, tried it out briefly in my classroom, and attended conference sessions about it. The ideas were brewing.

Based on a couple of collaboration sessions with my team and other colleagues, a unit came together where sketchnoting was key.

Here’s the sequence of lessons that became a series of powerful learning events.

Prep: Use Voice Recorder app on cell phone to record content from Social Studies text. Do one recording for each region to be studied and upload those to Google Drive. I gave them access to the files via links on a Google doc.

Essential Question: How did Geography, Climate, and Water affect the lives of Native Americans?

Their task: Learn about and understand the following components for your region of the United States. Be able to use your sketchnote to teach others in a jigsaw style. Be able to answer the essential question with specific examples.

 

Step 1: (15 min) Assign students to one region of the United States and discuss.

Step 2: (10 min) Model the process of sketchnoting for them. I played the audio file that I had recorded for the CA region over the sound system, and sketchnoted on the doc cam. I did a think-aloud while I paused and replayed parts of the recording to model that process for them.

Step 3: (20 min) Have them listen to their region’s recording on their Chromebooks with headphones and begin sketchnoting. They could pause and repeat as needed.

(A finished product)

Step 4: (10 min)  Have them read the same information in the curriculum and add to their sketchnote.

Step 5: (20 min) Put together groups of students that had the same region. They would compare sketchnotes and add even more to their own, based on the ideas from others.

Here are two sketchnotes from the same region (Southwest):

Step 6: (60 min) Split the class up into four groups so that there is one person from each cultural region.

The person who was sharing had 2 minutes to speak. Everyone else gathered around the table so they could hear and had the notepage on their Chromebook open. They could either type while the person was sharing, or just listen and then type when the speaker was done.

(A student’s notepage on the Southwest Region)

No one else was allowed to speak during this time. After the 2 min. was up, the group members could ask questions. This process was repeated for the other 5 regions as well. (We split this section up into two 30 min blocks.)

Step 7: Ask students to answer the essential question in writing. They could use their sketchnotes and note page to pull ideas from.

Takeaways:

• I was struck by how much each person had to share. Way more than if they had just read and taken notes. 
• The students didn’t fuss about having perfect art because they had an academic purpose to organize information. The art wasn’t the focus. 
• The engagement factor was high. 
• Classroom management was hardly needed. 
• I can see their thinking on a sketchnote in a way I can’t through writing. It was powerful for me to see.

Grading: I graded their sketchnotes for informational reading, their speaking and listening skills during the group sharing based on my obervations and their digital notes, and asked them to answer the essential question on a Google form for Social Studies content knowledge.

Feedback: I asked students for some feedback on the process. 1 was the lowest score and 5 was the highest.

Would I do this again? You bet!

A Day in the Life of a 1:1 Classroom

Westlake Charter School 5th Grade

Sometimes people assume that because I have a Chromebook cart in my classroom that I use them all day long. I wanted to document for myself, as well as for others, how much tech my students do use in a day, but more importantly, what the purpose was.

As I document a day below, you’ll see that students hop on and off of their devices all throughout the day. I feel like it is a good balance of extended use and short check-ins that blend with hands-on learning as well. The atmosphere is flexible and not constrained by a schedule of sharing devices. Because of this freedom, I am able to have a dynamic, engaging atmosphere that is supportive of individualized instruction. Students are thriving, and so am I!

7:45

School Begins

Students come in to see what is projected on the screen. It’s always an image. I ask them to come up with 3 details they notice, 2 questions, and draw a conclusion about what they think is going on. They usually do this in their spiral notebooks. About once every 15 days, I will have them type this into a Google form so that I can assess their sentence construction. I have now added a grammar component in as well. Students share sentences with each other, and I walk around to provide feedback.

8:00	Math
Most of the time, I deliver direct instruction and have students explore math content on whiteboards. Sometimes, students will work with McGraw Hill’s online component for our program, My Math.
On this day, I had students construct a number line in Google Draw so they would understand the concept of rounding a decimal to the nearest whole number.  After the number line construction, students worked a few problems in their math book, whole class. I’ll come back to this concept on another day.

8:40

Math continues with differentiation

I pull a small group to the carpet who still need help with place value and decimals, while the rest of the class works on Front Row assignments and then Prodigy. Front Row is a subscription we pay for where I can assign students individualized content. Prodigy is a free program where I can also assign students content. I can check in on reports of their progress and monitor how much time they are spending on each domain.

9:00

Wonder Report Research

Students have time to work on a topic of their choice. They need to come up with a question that is more than just Googleable, pull from 2-3 sources (for now), take notes, write either an informational, narrative, or opinion paper (their choice) using their source information, and present it to the class. Some students are currently researching the mystique of the Illuminati, how many emotions we go through in a day, why humans exist, and why people are so interested in sports. This is all done on Chromebooks.

9:20

Wonder Report Presentation

When they are ready to present, I pull up their work on my computer and project it. (Students do all of their work in a 5th grade folder that they share with me so I can access all of their projects at any time.) They present their information while the rest of the class is responsible for recording on a sticky three things they learned from each report for a Speaking and Listening grade. There is no due date, and when they complete one presentation, they start researching their next Wonder.

9:30	Snack Time
About 7 students typically head out to the ramp to have a snack break. The others use these 10 minutes to play each other in Prodigy, code on Scratch, or play Little Alchemy.

9:40	Morning Meeting
We circle up for Morning Meeting every day so that students can engage in the rituals of greeting each other, sharing an idea with the class, participating in an activity, and reading a morning message. When I recently asked students for feedback on our first trimester, 27/28 of them ranked Morning Meeting highly. No tech involved.

10:00

Literacy #grapax

Right now we are participating in The Global Read Aloud and are reading Pax, by Sarah Pennypacker. When I read to them, I project the book through my Kindle app so they can follow along if they want. This way, I can highlight sentences to analyze, or point out vocabulary that is worthy of stopping for. One of the main areas of study in the book is character analysis. We are working up to a major essay comparing the two main characters. Students are working out the scenes with Play-Doh while I am reading, and will share them when our session is complete.

10:20	Character Analysis
Students check in on the Padlet where Chapter 11 Twitter Slowchat questions are being answered. They work in a group of 4 to discuss the questions, type their group’s response on a Google Doc, and then paste it onto the Padlet. Classes from Ohio, Wisconson, Canada, New York, Texas, Illinois, N. Dakota, and Connecticut have also posted here, so the engagement factor is high.

10:45

Recess and lunch

11:30

Silent Reading

Students are working on their choice of reading goal: AR points (totally optional), 1,000,000 words by the end of the year, and/or 40 books by the end of the year. They track their books when complete on a quick Google Form. They have access to their data anytime. My goal is to conference with them once a week to check in, help them choose books, and push them to expand into new genres. I like that they are able to access their own data whenever they want because it has kept them personally motivated to read, and has allowed them to give recommendations to others as well. The log is located on my class website.

12:00	Science #ngss
We are currently exploring the changing states of matter. Students are mixing different substances, and weighing them before and after the mixing to determine whether or not matter increases, decreases, or stays the same. They are logging their data on a Google Doc.

12:55

Afternoon Recess

1:05	Word Work
All four of our 5th grade classes mix up on Fridays to practice spelling sorts through Words Their Way. They get time to practice in class. Each teacher made a Google Classroom for their spelling group, so students can access their words in their home class. There are directions for practice and word lists to use online. Students work together to sort and spell their words.

1:30	Spanish
Our Spanish teacher comes in, and I have a prep period. She has a Google Classrom set up as well, and the students spend some of their time accessing vocab lists, or instructions for assignments there. She also has them practicing on Duolingo for part of the class on certain days.

2:10

Prep for Virtual Field Trip with Learn Around the World #geoshow

We are taking a Virtual Field Trip to Komodo National Park in Indonesia tomorrow, so students have some exploring to do. They use the iPads we have checked out from the communal cart to scan QR codes on a Google Doc. Each QR code will take them to a different source to explore. Their goal is to find out what makes the Komodo Dragon such a unique and amazing creature so that they will be prepared to share facts and ask questions tomorrow. The sources are a combination of images, reading and a video.

2:45	Dismissal- Whew!

Mystery Skype for the Global Read Aloud

Mystery Skype has been on my Edu Bucket List for the last several years, and I checked it off today! It was so much more than I imagined it would be, and I can’t wait to do it again.

Mystery Skype is where you connect with another teacher, decide on a time to meet online, and have your students ask each other questions until they figure out the locations of each other’s classes.

Kim Hewitt and I set up a practice session a few days before to make sure our equipment worked and have our students run through what it felt like. (Kim is just across the hall from me). The teacher she would be Mystery Skyping with had sent her some tips about how to make this work better, and we were able to prepare ahead of time for things like holding up a sign for think time.

We had roles the students would take on in order to ensure that as many students as possible had an active part in the process. This was really helpful because it took a lot of the management off of me. We had Researchers that were on Google Maps narrowing down the search. They would come up with a question to tell the Runner, who would tell the Questioner, who would speak to the other class on camera. Then when they asked us a question, the runner would go back to the Researchers who would figure out the answer, tell the runner who would tell the Answerer, who would then give the answer on camera.

Before the actual event, I had the students write down what jobs they wanted, and justify their choice so that I could assign them their roles. I have never seen so much focused writing out of some of them! They gave reasons like: I would like to be a Sign Shower because I don’t like to appear on camera, or I would be a good photographer because my dad taught me how to take clear pictures.

Our class decided to have a strategy of asking a broad question first like: Are you in the United States (See pie diagram in image above). Then we could start to narrow down the questions. That worked pretty well, although we got sidetracked today when they gave us the hint that they were on some type of military establishment. We had already narrowed down their area to Southern CA when my students jumped in and asked if they were in Area 51? Comedy!!

Our goal today was to discover each other’s location and then discuss a bit of the Global Read Aloud book we are both reading, Pax. (We found each other on the Facebook group for the Global Read Aloud.) Our class prepped for the discussion today by having small group conversations on the questions the other teacher and I had agreed to ahead of time.

When it was finally time to meet our partner class, the excitement level went through the roof! They all got into position, and the girls who were the greeters read their script to introduce our class to them (without giving away our location)! We traded back and forth asking and answering questions. Things got a bit loud in the background because there was such excitement going around about their answers to our questions. That excitement energized some into greater focus for their jobs, and threw others off into an emotion overload! That will be something to come back to and visit next week.

The students really had to think about how to communicate, how to politely respond, and how to listen to others.

One of the most interesting jobs that 3 students had was to be a Director. They sat in the back and watched everything that was going on. They made a T chart to take notes on what was going well and what we could improve for next time. That job took insight, focus, and finesse when they reported back to the class afterward.

One of the most coveted jobs were the photographers. They took all of these pictures on iPads so I could upload them to my Drive. Their goal was to stay out of everyone’s way and capture everything. They loved it!

We also had students who recorded the questions the other class asked and our answers on one of our whiteboards, and another student recorded our questions and their answers. This will be great evidence to analyze before we do our next round.

They were coached on being good sports when the other class found out our location, and also not to go crazy when we found out theirs. Here is their quiet celebration:

Being in the middle of it all, it was hard to understand the impact of the process, but in looking at the pictures, hearing their verbal feedback and collecting individual feedback through a Google Form afterward, I now get the power that this process holds. So many skills were practiced in the prep as well as the actual event. It was pretty amazing.