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…
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
