9 questions to deepen and widen understanding
This module is about helping pupils to widen and deepen their understanding of their own learning, through asking themselves questions throughout the sketchbook process.
Asking questions alongside sketchbook work aids reflection and promotes self-directed or enquiry-based learning.
9 questions to deepen and widen understanding – pupils module
This module has been designed for pupils to access directly, or as a focus for discussion between teacher and pupils. We also recommend printing out the pdf below and making it available around the classroom so pupils can be reminded of the questions.
Encouraging students to pursue their own learning journeys, hinges on developing the skills of inquiry and the art of good questioning. We need to encourage students to think metacognitively, that is, to think about their own thinking.
So when should we ask questions? All the time!
At the beginning of the process students can be involved in planning for their own learning.
During sketchbook work questions help pupils develop an awareness of the process of their own learning. Older students could keep a thinking log in their sketchbook, recording what they are thinking about at regular intervals throughout a lesson. A thinking log provides a great resource for reflection and students can use it to plan the next steps in their learning journey.
Towards the end of the process, students can be involved in debriefing their thinking process and evaluating successes.
But learning journeys don’t really end. Learning is a cyclical and cumulative process. The last questions are often the same as the first.
Many thanks to Jo Evans for her work towards this module.
Any comments or feedback pls leave them below.
Starters for 10 – Using Sketchbooks in the morning
Once you have made or personalised your sketchbooks, to start getting pupils into the sketchbook habit, try giving all pupils a “sketchbook start” to their day.
Using sketchbooks at the beginning of the school day can help pupils make the transition from arriving to settling for work. They help focus the children and get them to start thinking and responding creatively.
Here are 10 x ten minute simple sketchbook starters – Pls add your own via the comment box below for all to share.
1. Make a shy drawing – feel shy when you draw, move only your fingers or wrist, draw quietly… sensitively…
2. Make a loud drawing – use dark or bright drawing materials, make vigorous marks, drawing quickly. It should be the drawing which is noisy – not the person!
3. Draw, collage or paint a pattern inspired by the words: “twirling, growing, happy”. The “pattern” must cover the whole page and go to all the edges. Change the words if you prefer…
4. Draw ants, spiders, bugs, butterflies. Draw only very small creatures on your page, all over your page. Place a piece of tracing paper over your page of creatures, and draw the lines they would have made as they flew or walked – but don’t just use normal pencil lines – use dotted lines, soft lines, scribble lines, curly lines, shy lines… Don’t draw so many lines your creatures are covered, and think where the lines are going. use cellotape to stick the tracing paper over your drawing of creatures on one side (to make a page you can turn).
5. Sitting in your place, look around the room. Fix your eyes on a corner of the room which is far away, and start drawing your version of it on your paper. Don’t worry if you can’t see detail – get your impression down on paper. Draw out from the corner you have chosen – remember the “corner” might not be an actual corner of the room, but a corner created by a shelf, or window or bookcase, or curtain… Fill your page
6. Get some lego (or other similar elemental toy), and draw the elements on your page. have them close to you so you can touch them and turn them over before you draw them, so you really know what they’re like – but don’t start building with them (yet). Use colour as well as pencil. Design a few lego shapes of your own.
7. Build with the lego (or similar) for just a minute or so, and draw what you have built.
8. Choose a paragraph out of a story book and read it out loud. Write it on a board too so it can be seen. Re-write the story on a sketchbook page, replacing words with images wherever possible. Be as inventive as you can.
9. Let you tongue feel what your teeth feel like, and feel what your gums are like. Don’t put your fingers in your mouth. Then make a drawing about what you think your mouth/teeth/gums feels like (not looks like)
10. Put a board in the classroom and invite pupils to write their suggestions for ten minute starters…
Sketchbooks as tools to help personalise learning
Sketchbooks provide an excellent opportunity for pupils to reflect and absorb upon their learning. They provide a platform for powerful reinforcement, and to nurture further understanding… and for teachers to gain insight into pupils thought processes.
Used either after a lesson, or at the end of the school day, sketchbooks can give pupils the opportunity:
For the teacher:
To encourage post-learning reflection:
Please share your thoughts and experiences below.
Drawing and composition
This activity was suggested by Yumi Okuda and explores the sketchbook page as a space, and encourages experimentation with composition and scale.
Lay out some objects on the table – leave some space between each object Open your sketchbook to a full spread double page (i.e. use both pages) Start by drawing one object on the page Turn the sketchbook around to it’s side and draw another object on the same page Look at your work so far – look at the white space of the page, and lines of the objects you have drawn. You can reorder the objects (i.e. don’t draw them in the same composition/arrangement as they are on the table – make your sketchbook page something different. Draw another of the objects in a part of the white space Keep turning, looking and drawing Enjoy how your page has no real up or down!
OR
Experiment with creating a sense of distance – Choose one object and draw it as small as possible, and choose another and draw it as large as possible.
Doodle Ball
Doodle Ball
Usually when we draw we do so on a sheet of paper – a flat surface. Making a doodle ball (or doodle box) is a fun activity in which you draw over the entire surface of a three dimensional object.
Making a doodle ball is a good way of working – usually when you draw on a a piece of paper you start at a certain point, draw your picture, and stop. When you draw on a ball you start drawing, but then you carry on as there is no edge.
As you draw, your thoughts can wander too – and you end up with new ideas, as well as fun drawings.
You can work on your doodle ball when your are listening to something else – music, tv, even a lesson if you get permission from a teacher. Let what you hear inspire your drawing.
These doodle balls are also nice because you can hold them in your hand, and turn them, and work quietly with just a pencil – without having a sketchbook which you have to rest on something.
To make a doodle ball, take a ball, any size, and tear up some thin paper into small (cm square) pieces.
Using wall paper paste or pva glue, paste the paper pieces on the ball, working all the way round until its completely covered. You may want to give it two coats of paper. Let it dry completely before trying to draw on it.
Then start doodling. Start anywhere and draw anything. Just let your thoughts ramble as you draw, and draw in response to the marks you have already made. Most importantly don’t second guess what it will look like before you start – just give it a go. Remember just like a sketchbook you can colour, collage, stick, make notes… Make one ball, or make a collection – and don’t forget to document with a camera and send us the images back to the website.
What shape are your thoughts?
What shape are your thoughts? – Take your thoughts on a walk…
The activities on this page explore how we can encourage primary-aged children to begin to explore their own thinking processes. Encouraging children to externalise their thoughts, through sketching, writing, notemaking etc, enables children to nurture an awareness of their own thinking processes. That awareness leads to the ability to develop their thoughts further and to explore around, developing creative and critical thinking skills.
The activity introduces the idea that thoughts aren’t always linear (especially creative thinking), and allows pupils to play with the idea that their thoughts can and will take them certain places… and make certain patterns. It gives pupils the time, space and opportunity to develop different ways of thinking (visual, verbal, aural, kinesthetic).
“What shape are your thoughts?” is an excellent way to introduce children to key concepts of sketchbook thinking – although the actual shape of the “sketchbook” is anything but traditional.
The images and text below have been designed to introduce teachers to the ideas behind the resources. The pupils resource has been designed for children to access directly, and to get them started.
What shape are your thoughts?
Teacher Introduction1). The “sketchbook surface”.
In this activity the sketchbook surface can be either 2 or 3 dimensional. We’ll start with 2 dimensional surfaces – we took a map, or a dress making pattern, and painted out (with white paint) most of the detail (the writing, diagrams etc), leaving behind a bare and arbitrary structure of roads or lines. The reason we did this was 2 fold:
to give each child a large piece of paper on which to explore their thoughts in many directions, the remaining lines or roads provide a framework to encourage that exploration.
If you don’t want to use old maps or dress patterns, which can be got cheaply from charity shops, you can just use large sheets of paper, with arbitrary lines drawn on them.
2) The central question get the children to start their thoughts of with a question which they write in the middle of their sheet. “How was my journey to school?” serves well, but the question doesn’t have to be “map” related.
3) Making thoughts real The children start to put down their thoughts, instinctively, on the paper. Children should be allowed to order or sort their thoughts as much or as little as they are naturally inclined to. Key to getting them to externalise their thoughts, is to introduce them to the many ways in which they can get their ideas down: sketching, making notes or diagrams, sticking, collecting, writing etc. The “What shape are your thoughts?” Pupils resource will help with this introduction.
4) Revisit and think more Once children start to populate their sketchpages, get them to revisit each item and think around. Encourage pupils to “have another thought” linked to the first, and externalise that second thought in some way:
“What shape are your thoughts?” Pupils Resource: Doodle Ball
The Doodle Ball Pupils Resource explores how children can draw on 3 dimensional surfaces to promote “thinking around”.
Make a shy drawing
Why make a shy drawing?
Well to make a drawing which seems shy, you really have to slow down and withdraw from the hustle and bustle of the school day. The act of making a shy drawing, although sometimes tricky at first, helps pupils relax into a state of mind which isn’t normally experienced during the school day, and which lends itself to creative thought.
These exercises and suggestions provide a focus which enables pupils and teachers to explore different aspects of making a drawing, including sound, action and intention. By taking the focus a way from what the drawings look like in the first instance, and by providing starting points which may be outside of pupils existing experience, pupils are less inclined to be discouraged because they think they “can’t draw”. By presenting these exercises as opportunities for the class to “think together” around the activity,in an open-ended way, you will also be encouraging pupils to think laterally and inventively.
Please feedback via the “reply to” comments form below. We’d love to receive images of children’s work produced as a result of these exercises.
Set Up and Teaching Notes
A “hardly there” drawing.
Use a very hard, very sharp pencil and make a very small drawing in the middle of a the paper. Of course the drawing could shyly grow and explore the paper, or it could stay shrunken in the middle…
The drawing could be of something, which pupils are observing, or it could just be about mark-making. Some children will have more empathy with a line being shy and uncertain, than others.
Develop and Extend:
Line drawn with scraper pen on plastic milk bottle section.
Techniques which might help you make a shy drawing:
Drawing speed
This exercise can be used during sketchbook time as a way of focussing the mind, as well as a way of improving drawing and looking skills. It can take five minutes, or much longer, depending upon how you present the activity. Again as a teacher it might be beneficial if you try this activity at the same time as your pupils.
Speed might not be a word which you associate with drawing, but in fact when children (or adults) become frustrated with a drawing, it might be because the speed with which they are looking at the object, and the speed with which they are drawing, are not well matched. The hand might be moving to draw before the eye sees!
Exercise:
1. Set up several small collections of objects on each table for the pupils to draw. It is vital that each pupil can see the objects easily.
2. Ask your pupils to take a minute to let their eyes wander over the object (in silence). Ask them to become aware of how slowly they can look… that is to say to become aware of their eyes moving slowly around the object, taking in its details.
3. Then ask them to pick up their pencil, and begin to draw the object, this time matching the speed of which they make marks on the paper, with the speed at which they look. If you think the pencils are moving to quickly, ask them to slow down their looking and drawing still further.
4. Remind them that their pencil should move across the paper at the same speed as their eye moves over the object. Tell them not to worry about what the drawing looks like – but to concentrate more on how it feels to match the speed of drawing and speed of looking. The end result of the drawing is less important than bringing together drawing and looking as one continuous action, and acknowledging what this feels like.
5. After an agreed time (say 5 minutes) get them to stop drawing and have a look at their drawing. Get the pupils to label it “slow drawing, 5 minutes).
6. Remind them that they can come back and try this exercise whenever they feel frustrated with their drawings, or if they feel they need to relax or calm down. By reminding them what this exercises is good for, you can give it to the pupils as something they can come back to, and use, when they feel the need.
Making a Washing Line Sketchbook
Making a washing line sketchbook is a great class icebreaker exercise which gets children to actively experience some useful sketchbook skills. Getting older children to work with younger children, and involving teachers too, can really help the energy of the workshop.
The flash module below has been designed to use directly with your children to introduce them to the ideas. The transcript of the flash workshop is included below.
Transcript to Flash Module
1) Collecting!
In this part of the workshop you’re going to need to collect! But you’re going to collect in a new way – you’re going to collect words and pictures. Grab 10 or so sheets of paper and something to rest on. You’re going to explore an area (you teacher will tell you where). Work on your own (don’t follow your friend!) and we want you to look around really carefully. We want you to cover six sheets of paper with pictures, or words, or collages. Start by choosing something tiny and make a tiny picture. Then choose something a bit bigger, and make a picture, and carry on until you’ve made your six pictures and your last picture is of something much bigger. Use lots of materials – and don’t forget you can cut and stick, and write words, as well as draw – you can do what ever you like. Your teacher won’t tell you what to do!
BACK TO THE WASHING LINE – get yourself in a line and peg up your pictures – put all your pictures next to each other, but with no gaps between where your friends pictures stop and where your pictures start.
Stand back and admire your work!
2) Reflecting! Reflecting means thinking about what you have done
Staying in line, get into twos or threes, and ask each other these questions: Why did you choose to draw the things you drew? Why did you choose the materials you used? Why do you like or dislike them? Note down your answers on a sheet of paper and peg them up next to your work.
3) Reacting!
Now its time to mess it up! Wander up and down the line till you’ve seen everyone’s work. Then forget all about which pictures and yours and which are your friends – pretend you all own them all! Say to yourself: “I’m going to tidy this up a bit” and choose five or so pictures spread across the line which you think might be better pegged somewhere else. You might choose to rearrange images which share the same colours, or materials, or themes, or you might decide not to put things which are similar together, and instead to put images together which you think begin to tell a story. Any thing goes, as long as you’ve thought about it. If two of you want to rearrange the same pictures, don’t argue, have a quick chat about why you each want to move them, and see if you can come to an agreement!
4) Reflecting again. Stand back and enjoy the new order! How do you all feel?
5) Let the washing line enjoy an audience form the rest of the school, and then take a hole punch, unpeg the sheets in order, and lace them together to make a class or school sketchbook!
Please submit your comments re feedback and development of this module via the reply box below, or talk to other teachers about its practical use via the forum: . If you have any images of washing line sketchbooks made in your school, we’d love to show them on the site: please email us here
