Doodling for Understanding in The Uppers (6th-8th)
One of my favorite tools in my teacher toolbox is to have kids draw little pictures or doodles to reinforce their learning. Drawing engages different parts of the brain as kids explore new ideas, wrestle with a complex texts or review concepts. This type of multi-modal teaching and learning is core to the pedagogy at the Center School, as we strive to engage all learners..
This week I busted out Doodling for Understanding (my term) three times:
1. During my Shakespeare elective, we were puzzling over this line that Lady Macbeth says to Macbeth: “Look like the innocent flower/But be the serpent under’t”
We talked for a while about Shakespeare’s imagery here and what the lines mean. Kids figured out that Lady M was giving some dubious advice to Macbeth, telling him to act kind and nice but to actually BE deadly. The discussion was rich and I thought it might be a good idea to make sure that everyone really “got it” by asking them to doodle the line on their script. You can see they really got it!
2. Reading The Outsiders in Lit class. After a chunk of reading, we’ll divvy up scenes from the text and each kid will doodle an illustration from that day’s reading.
Johnny notices the rings on Bob’s fingers… the rings that gave him the scar on his cheek
Ponyboy and Cherry watching the sunset from their houses on different sides of town
The Socs pull up in the Blue Mustang
We share the doodles and enjoy them as a class, noticing details and asking questions. Later in the book, we’ll put them in order to help create a timeline. We also write summaries of each chapter, so between those two modes, kids have a lot of opportunities to show their understanding of the plot, characters and themes of the reading.
3. Learning about the Constitution. In Social Studies, the 8th graders are doing a mini unit on civics, which includes learning about the structure and content of the Constitution. Last week, we were reading a packet together that explained what each Article contained. When we got to the Legislative branch, we encountered a long, dense list of responsibilities. Time for doodles! Everyone turned their paper over and drew one of the jobs of Congress.
Coining Money and Punishing Counterfeiters
Make rules for how to become a citizen
Declaring War and Supporting an Army
I put all of the drawings in a slideshow to share with the kids the next day for review. I couldn’t resist sending the slides to Roo, my husband who is a lawyer. His response was “Ah! I see someone’s been reading Article I Section 8 of the Constitution!” Nailed it!