I am an avid Pinterest user, which as most people know can get dangerously addicting. I have tried lately to channel my Pinterest addiction into something useful, so I have been scouring teaching pins. Lesson planning at the beginning of the school year with a four month old can be a little bit scary, but I think I stumbled onto something AWESOME!
Sketchnotes are all the rage in tech land. (BUT It's crazy hard to find examples that aren't done by insane artists or about conference type things.) Being a high school English teacher, I see that not all students are bullet and list note-takers. This year I wanted to provide more options for notes, instead of just showing the same PowerPoint over and over. That used to be tech savvy and hip... now the kids are bored of it! So I took last year's version of the notes and voila, I transformed them!
This is my teacher version of the notes we took today.
These are the pre-reading notes that we discuss before reading "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. They are fairly short notes (3 literary terms and 3 "buzz words"), so I thought they would be ideal to try this new strategy with.
I began the lesson by showing the students some google image examples of sketch notes. I explained to them that sketchnotes were just a technique in lieu of traditional note-taking. I allowed those linear thinkers to take notes in traditional bullets.
I drew the sections on the board for them and actually sketched the notes out along with them. (I modeled them this time, and I think I will the next couple of times I use this technique.) Eventually, I think my sophomores could do this without my guidance (and my terrible art skills).
We took these notes in our interactive notebooks (composition books).
Below is an actual student copy. I think it was a successful day of notes!
Irony: dramatic, situational, and verbal
Symbolism
Tone
Buzz words: tradition, community, lottery
PS Yes, I used Buffy as an example of situational irony!
Tell me, have you used this technique before? Would you be willing to try it in class?
