Sketchbooks: an active way to display!
Sketchbooks present pupils and teachers with an excellent opportunity to share thoughts, and at the same time to create an exhibition or display which can inspire others to action.
Here’s some ideas about how to display sketchbooks to create or encourage a more active and therefore engaging display. If you have more ideas, pls leave your comments below.
A sketchbook corner: Try REALLY HARD not to dismantle sketchbooks! Instead think about them as OBJECTS and think how you can display them as exhibits which can be touched. Think less about traditional ways of displaying artwork, and more about creating a corner or table which in itself creates a sense of visiting, sitting, enjoying – use cushions, a rug, a chair, a pile of sketchbooks… Allowing the audience to interact with the sketchbooks, and be less passive. Create a sketchbook “wall”: If some of your sketchbook work has been created on separate sheets of paper, compile a sketchbook wall. Don’t make it neat and tidy, don’t mount pages to display them – keep it what it is – a series of thoughts – let is look more like it is in a working artists studio, than a final exhibition. Its far more interesting and energetic that way. Show context: If your sketchbooks were used to further another activity – e.g. design or research and idea which was then made, display all elements together so the context of the sketchbook can be seen. If possible display pupils sketchbooks alongside sketchbooks from creative practitioners – including teachers. Empower the pupils to decide on the display – this is all about self-directed learning after all! Always think about how you can enable activity in the audience… Give your audience access to materials so they can write down their ideas, and start getting into the sketchbook habit – inspired by your display!
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…
Good practice
We’d like to introduce a couple of key core values about the Sketchbooks in Schools approach:
The teacher shouldn’t make marks (of any kind) directly in a pupils sketchbook!
There’s been lots of debate since we started this project about how we can protect the sketchbook as a place for pupils to call their own, and at the same time balance the potential need (when used within school) for a sketchbook to be seen by a teacher, or even to be assessed (this is a prickly area and we will create resources to kick start the debate very soon).
When sketchbooks are shared by a pupil, with a teacher or the rest of the class, we feel very strongly that we should be respectful of the pupils’ books and their content (and so teach them respect).
Understanding how to nurture sketchbook work is the subject of another module (coming soon). There are two simple ways however which teachers might want to think about introducing as being courteous and non-destructive ways to feedback to pupils about their sketchbook work:
1) Post-it. Use post-its, or paper and paper clips, on sketchbook pages as a way of giving feedback on work, and helping with direction etc.
2) Invest in one-to-one. Pupils and teachers will find “tutorial” style feedback much more beneficial, although of course it takes more time. But if this kind of feedback is built in to the school day/week it really provides an opportunity to build an understanding of how the child is thinking, and promotes self-directed learning. It also works well in small groups too, so pupils can benefit from each others thought processes.
The teacher should try the activity too!
When pupils see the teacher trying the same activity as them it works for two (at least) reasons:
1) It’s very empowering for the pupils to see the teacher “learning”. It again promotes the idea of self-directed learning, and demonstrates learning as a creative and life long process with exciting outcomes.
2) Through trying the activity for themselves, teachers can benefit from a greater understanding of their own creativity, directly experience and understand more deeply WHY the activity is being undertaken, and actively think towards HOW the activity can be developed.
If you have any comments or suggestions re the above advice please use the comment box below.
