Guest Blogger: Sketch, Paper, Scissors: Using Foldables and Edusketching in Instruction w/ Robin McLean

Dr. McLean was recently named a
Philadelphia Eagles All Pro Teacher

Editor's Notes: This blog is part of a series of guest contributors from the national school-based agricultural education family. Dr. Robin McLean is a National Board Certified Educator in Career and Technical Education and teaches at Northern Burlington County Regional School District in central New Jersey. She has spent 19 years in agricultural education serving as a high school teacher, New Jersey FFA Specialist, and most recently middle school teacher. She is a CASE Introduction to Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources certified teacher, Nearpod PioNear, Plickers Ambassador, and Google Certified Educator. Robin serves her professional organizations through the “Teach Ag” campaign helping to recruit and retain agriculture teachers, acting as the New Jersey Association of Agricultural Educator representative on the Career and Technical Education Association of New Jersey Board, co-chairing the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards/ Association for Career and Technical Education Advisory Group and representing NAAE Region VI on the Professional Growth Committee. In her school district, she is a Facilitator of Technology, a teacher's association representative for her local union, and a member of the school's Communication Committee as part of the Middle States Accreditation Excellence by Design process. In her free time, she enjoys Broadway shows, world travel and counted cross-stitch.

Today, students are surrounded by technology. Many school districts are one-to-one. bring your own device (BYOD), or fortunate enough to have class sets of some tech device (laptops, chromebooks, iPads, etc.) I think those tools provide a wonderful way to engage students, help them connect to the world beyond the classroom, and adapt to the diversity of ways in which they learn. (If you want proof of my belief of their value, feel free to visit last year’s guest blog I shared) However, as technologically integrated as I strive to make my classroom, I also try to create opportunities where students are folding, sketching, and processing their information in a “low tech” way.

Adding an illustration to a soil horizons foldable - horizons layered on front, descriptions on flap and sketch inside.

Foldables

Early in my teaching career, I was wandering around the vendors area of the National Science Teachers Association Convention and came across the book “Dinah Zike’s Teaching Science with Foldables.” I was looking for how I could more actively engage my students in instruction, so I bought the book. Since that time, I have used foldables as we identified tree parts and their functions, soil horizons, class rules, and more. What exactly is a foldable? Well, it’s paper that gets folded and usually cut into a shape that helps convey information. Rather than reinvent the wheel here, I encourage to visit this resource that shares some basic foldables and some ideas for using them.

The biggest challenge often comes with getting students to follow the directions on how to fold and cut. As we create foldables and use them, I end up with comments like this “When are we taking fun notes again?” Apparently when your information folds, it is no longer “normal notes.” Another comment I’ve heard is “Can I guess what goes behind this flap?” as they think about ways we have used the foldables in the past and how we might be recording similar knowledge in the current lesson. As students work, I circulate the classroom hole punching their foldables, but I have heard of other teachers who encourage students to have a pocket folder of sorts to keep their foldables.

Want to know more? There is a Foldables Wikispace and Dinah Zike’s Reading and Study Skills which although Social Studies based provides plenty of ideas for a jumping off point to explore how you could use these tools in agricultural education.

Edusketching

Until April 2016, I had students drawing items in their notes, sometimes even using the “Picasso Moment” in the National FFA Lifeknowledge E-moments resource (You might need a login to access this). Then, I was wandering Barnes and Nobles with a 20% off coupon and happened across “Visual Notetaking for Educators” by Wendi Pillars I flipped through it and of course bought it.

Composite of my NAAE Book Club
Edusketching attempt

Sure, it mentioned some strategies that I already use such as simple graphic organizers that then have some color added or taking breaks in the lesson to sketch out key ideas. The book also stressed some other important ideas with visual notetaking as well such as “process over pretty” (making the sketch about what you are learning and not worrying about the artistic nature of it), using sketches to predict and then adding to the sketch once further study happens, building on sketches throughout a unit, and even sketching words to help give them connection to the lesson. I began thinking about ways I could incorporate lessons from this book into my practice. (Note to reader: If you are thinking of investing in the book up, I would encourage getting a print version. I drew in and wrote all over mine to truly embrace the experience) This summer, I carried a notebook in my purse that I called my “Practice and Play” book where I could jot down ideas for visual notetaking and also toy with sketching ideas myself. I even sketched out an answer for the NAAE Summer Book Club.

At the start of this school year, I began engaging in what I would call purposeful edusketching where I would apply the concepts I had read about with my students. I would draw a sketch or two as we worked through so they could see that the goal was NOT about pretty but truly about thinking about the information and making meaning of it. My students have now gotten into the sketch to process role. I’ve even had students ask “Can we do the little sketches to stick it now?” Knowing that there is meaning for them, validates the process even more to me.

Combining the two

More often than not, I am combining foldables and edusketching. The best use of the was the introduction of the class rule book this year which was a foldable called “Ag 8 Rules” (or whatever the course was, but note the double meaning rules could have.) We wrote shortened versions of the rules and then sketched some of them out. I wish I had this student’s artistic ability!

If you try these strategies, I’d love to hear how you used them. Happy drawing!

WARNING: Drawing could spread to your whiteboard!

PS - Since after I wrote this, the links seemed to not want to appear hyperlinked to the phrases, here are some of the organizations, resources and tech tools I referenced.

Nearpod - https://nearpod.com/

Plicker - https://www.plickers.com/

Teach Ag - http://www.naae.org/teachag/

Middle States - http://www.msa-cess.org/RelId/33637/ISvars/default/Home.htm

ACTE - https://www.acteonline.org/

National Board - http://www.nbpts.org/

Last Year’s Blog - http://psuaee412.blogspot.com/2015/11/guest-blogger-series-week-in-life-of.html

NSTA - https://www.nsta.org/

Foldable - http://www.csun.edu/~krowlands/Content/Academic_Resources/Foldables/Basic%20Foldables.pdf

Foldable Wikispace - http://foldables.wikispaces.com/

Zike Reading - http://www.myteacherpages.com/webpages/PLash/files/Foldables.pdf

E-moments - https://www.ffa.org/MyResourceDocuments/lk_eMoments_All.pdf