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…
When to use sketchbooks
Sketchbooks time which is just about sketchbooks
Sketchbooks time which is embedded in subjects
When you might use Sketchbooks
Sketchbooks time which is just about sketchbooks
The Sketchbooks in Schools project is about making time and space for a child to experience what it feels like to take control of his or her own learning; to feel a sense of ownership, pride and motivation. The project focuses around the importance of enabling a child to realise how he or she can learn to think and act creatively and resourcefully, skills which can benefit EVERY one, throughout school and beyond into adult life.
The exercises and activities we will be providing via this space can be used as standalone activities in “sketchbook time”, and in being used in this way, the sketchbook can be a vital tool in enabling this kind of learning. We feel there is a great opportunity (and necessity) to MAKE time for this kind of learning in schools today, and now. Pls let us know via the comment box below how your school has successfully carved such a time within the school day, and the impact it has had.
Sketchbooks time which is embedded in subjects
Use of sketchbooks can also be embedded in the school day via subject areas (which extends way beyond art and design). Creativity is a skill which actually underpins (or at least should underpin) ALL learning. If you are uncertain as to whether there is an opportunity to use sketchbooks within certain lessons, ask one simple question:
Would the pupils benefit from thinking around the subject area? Would they benefit, or would their learning experience be deeper, more active, and more relevant if they were given space to experience the subject area from a number of perspectives?
If the answer is yes, then sketchbooks can help.
Children need to be introduced to sketchbook skills, and given practice, just like any other learning experience. For that reason we see the activities that we will be providing via this space as being key to enabling those skills. Once those skills begin more ingrained, and present as possibilities, then the use of sketchbooks, or the act of reaching for a sketchbook, will become more habitual and natural.
We invite your comments!
