Have you heard of sketchnotes? This visual note-taking technique uses pictures, words, arrows, lines, and doodles to capture a main idea, and you don't have to be an artist to do it! Sketchnotes are not about art, but about triggering both sides of your brain to help you remember important ideas using visual cues to highlight information. This technique requires a deep understanding and synthesizing of information in order to capture the big ideas.
I see similarities between the concept of sketchnotes and book snaps, one of my new favorite ways of having students interact with text, and I fully intend to mesh these two strategies together this year!
Introducing Sketchnotes to Students
To introduce the concept of sketchnoting to students, we started with a low-stakes assignment where students got to share something about themselves. With a new concept and/or a new tool, it's important to give students time to experiment before asking them to do something that has a lot of heavy content. Think about your level of anxiety if you were in a class that asked you to use a technology tool you had never used before, and you were told you had to complete a high stakes assignment that you would be graded on the first time you ever used it. Yikes! The time spent "playing" around with it so you can figure out how it works is well worth the time spent so you know how to use it later when heavier content is layered in. When you're familiar with the tool you are using to create something, it frees up working memory to focus on your ideas rather than how to use the tool.
We introduced sketchnotes with a short video: Sketchnote Frenzy: The Basics of Visual Note-taking.
I created the sketchnote above digitally proving that you don't have to be an artist to try sketchnoting! I got the idea for the 4Cs sketchnote from Expressive Monkey's Sketchnote Toolbox on TpT. Here is her blog post: The Visual Structure of Sketchnotes. We began with sharing what we did over the summer through the 4Cs. We started by putting our names in the middle, and in the upper right hand corner, we chose something important we wanted to communicate. In my example, I shared about the opportunity I had to take a tour of Google in Boulder, CO. It was amazing! In the lower right hand corner, we shared something creative we did. This summer I became Raspberry Pi certified, and I learned how to do a lot of sophisticated programming. My picture shows a Raspberry Pi and the lights I programmed like a stop light. In the upper left hand corner, we shared people with whom we have collaborated. I went to two different conferences this summer, so in my example, I listed the teachers who came with me to those conferences. In the lower left hand corner, we used critical thinking to start brainstorming ideas for genius hour. Students wrote what they were interested in learning more about.
Technology Options for Sketchnotes
If you're using a windows 10 device, these apps are great for sketchnoting:
- Fresh Paint (this is the app I used in my example)
- Paint 3D
If you're using an iPad, these are my favorite apps:
- Paper 53
- Book Creator – this is not a drawing app, but it has the potential for adding drawings, pictures, voices, and even videos in an ebook making it a much more dynamic way to create a sketchnote!
- SeeSaw – this is another tool that is not a drawing app, but it has the potential to add drawings, pictures, voice, and create videos and put them into a digital portfolio. Another great tool for creating dynamic sketchnotes!
- Pic Collage EDU – this tool is for making collages with pictures, but it also has the ability to add drawings, words, and pictures. Check out this post from Erintegration: Drawing on Pic Collage with A Simple Hack.
- Popplet – this is another tool that is not a drawing app–it's actually a visual mind-mapping tool or graphic organizer that has the functionality to add pictures, videos, words, or drawings to organize your thoughts or data. Popplet can be used on the iPad or computer.
If you don't have access to a classroom set of devices or you prefer to write/draw with a pencil and paper, there is still a technology option for you that I'm SO excited about! I recently learned about Rocket books. These notebooks look and feel like real paper that use Frixion Erasable pens or markers (some of my favorite!). You can add your sketchnotes into the notebook, then scan it with the rocketbook app and send it straight to your google drive, dropbox, email, or even send it in a text (which is great for my son when he wants to send his picture to grandma and grandpa!). Once you have saved your sketchnote digitally, put your notebook in the microwave with a mug of water on top of it, and it wipes all the pages clean so you can use them all over again! Amazing! These notebooks are pricer than regular notebooks, but if they hold up, they can be reused over and over by different classes each year. I'm writing a grant for a couple of class sets so I can test that theory. I'll keep you posted on how that experiment goes . . .
Close Reading with Sketchnotes
Stellaluna was a bat that landed in a bird's nest when she was just a baby after falling out of her mama's grasp during an owl attack. Stellaluna was raised by the mama bird, and although she had some similarities to her adopted bird family, she did not always act like her bird brothers. Stellaluna did not like to eat bugs, she had trouble flying and landing during the day, and she liked to sleep hanging upside down by her feet. After her three bird brothers tried hanging upside down by their feet too, mama bird told Stellaluna that she would have to stop teaching the other birds bad habits if she wanted to stay in that nest. Later Stellaluna meets other bats, and she discovers that she was not wrong, she was just different than her bird family. But in the end, they can all still be friends despite their differences.
First Read: Determine what the text says.
In my sketchnote example (I used the app fresh paint to create it), you can see I labeled a #1 and #2 to represent my focus during the first and second read. Sketchnotes are a great tool to use when close reading because you can easily go back to your notes and add more during successive readings. On my first read, I focused on comparing the bat Stellaluna to the birds Pip, Flutter, and Flap. I made a kind of double bubble map with their similarities and differences.
Second Read: Figure out how the text works.
On the second read, I was focusing on the author's purpose. When Stellaluna met other bats, she saw that they hung upside down when they slept, they ate bugs, and they flew in the dark. When the other bats asked her why she wasn't hanging upside down she said, "Mama bird said I was wrong." The other bat responded, "For a bird maybe, but not for a bat." I added this quote after my second read because I thought it was a good illustration of the author's purpose. It is also a great opportunity to apply the author's purpose to students' own lives and have a discussion about race or peer pressure. Stellaluna tried to do the "right" thing when she was in the bird's nest, but was she really doing anything wrong? How do you think that made Stellaluna feel about herself? Have you ever felt like Stellaluna where something you do is wrong in one place but not in another place (like at home)? Why do you think that is? How do you handle it?
Third Read: Analyze and compare the text.
On the third read, in my sketchnote example (created in a rocket book), I compared Stellaluna to a poem by Maya Angelou, Caged Bird. An except of this powerful poem can be found in the book Poetry for Young People: Maya Angelou. I added the quote, "The caged bird sings with a fearful trill/ of things unknown but longed for still/and his tune is heard on a distant hill/ for the caged bird sings of freedom." In this poem, the bird is in a cage and his wings are clipped and his feet are tied. It made me think of Stellaluna, and although she wasn't in a cage in the story, in a way she was caged too. She did not have the freedom to do things that came naturally to her like eat fruit and sleep upside down, and she forced herself to live in a way that didn't allow her to be herself. In this poem, it's as though the birds and Stellaluna trade places, and they know what it feels like to lack freedom. This poem is a metaphor that has implications for things students face today. There are a lot of ways that you can experience a loss of freedom. Have you ever done something because everyone else was doing it? Did it make you feel like your wings were clipped and your feet were tied? In other words, did you feel like you couldn't be yourself?
These short texts give a lot of opportunities for deep, rich discussions, and you can capture this higher level thinking with sketchnotes.
How will you use sketchnotes?
