The article I found, Drawing on students understanding written by Mary Stein, Shannan McNair, and Jan Butcher, discuss how drawing can enhance students understanding of animals. They share their personal experiences of using drawing during a unit on insects. Not only did students present detailed drawings of selected insects, it provided a way to view how the student's knowledge of the content change over time. As they learned more about insects, their drawings became more in depth. Drawing provided them an opportunity to show their understanding, reflect on the content, and use creativity. Turing something concrete such as an ant into a drawing requires higher level thinking because the picture is more abstract. Students have to consider the accuracy of their drawing, such as size and color. Stein, McNair, and Butcher offer four suggestions to effectively integrate drawing with science education.
1. Student Ownership
- Before drawing (insects for example), give students many other concrete experiences. Take them outside to observe bugs, keep bugs in a jar for classroom observations, look at pictures, and video. Then when they are asked to draw insects they have a lot of experiences and background knowledge to draw from (no pun intended!). Another way to promote student ownership is to let them choose what to draw. Students naturally find interest is certain things and we want to use those interest to our advantage. The authors also noted that by giving students choice on what insect to draw, it lowered competition between students and fear that drawings weren't good enough. Give students various materials to create their drawings as well. Have a lot of supplies on hand so they can experiment with different art supplies to make their drawing unique.
2. Connecting drawing to science learning experiences
- Like I said above, you want to make sure to provide students with science experiences so they are prepared for a drawing activity. Providing these experiences gets the kids excited and motivated about the content and their drawing. The purpose of incorporating drawing in the Science classroom is not because it's fun, it's because it is a great way for students to share their understanding. A lot of times young students, such as those in primary grades, can better communicate their understanding through a drawing rather than writing or talking. The article provides the example of young students showing their understanding of insect body parts by drawing them without the teacher introducing developmentally inappropriate vocabulary such as thorax and abdomen.
- As students are drawing you want to scaffold them toward completing an accurate documentation. If you were to have students draw insects, make sure to have actual insects, magazines with pictures, microscopes to look at insects, all at the students disposal during the drawing process. Students may have an idea of how to draw or what to include, but they need a resource to check their accuracy.
4. Provide modeling
- As you are giving students inquiry experiences to support their future drawings, make sure to model. Take a notebook on nature walks and tell students you need to write down or draw your observations to show students that science is a process. When you get to the drawing step, take out your observations, re-visit the resources to show students how to use past experiences to influence current ideas.
Stein. M., McNair., S., Butcher., J. (2001). Drawing on student understanding. Science and Children. 18-22
For my second career (teaching is my third:) I took classes at the Morten Arboretum in Chicago and earned a degree in horticulture. There was an entire program devoted to accurate nature drawing. Unique because the only programs offered at the school were botanical. It was amazing what I learned from taking one class. A whole new perspective and exploration helped me retain more and make a full circle connection to the information.This also persuades me more towards project assessment as it points to accuracy of understanding of the material.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of having students draw to show their understanding of a specific science topic. This would be an excellent way to differentiate as well, because students who might not be able to articulate their thoughts into words would be able to draw and use creativity to show the same things. This also shows the importance of using observations and evidence to support their drawings!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of integrating the arts across subjects- science included. I do think the two "subjects" are very compatible, and that students' learning can be taken to a deeper level with the inclusion of drawing and the arts. Recently, I visited the DaVinci exhibit at the Science Center and was reminded of the unbelievable synergy between his drawings and scientific ideas. Really, it is easy to imagine how a student's depth of understanding an insect can be improved by actually drawing it, and then revising, etc. Unfortunately, I think that many teachers are apprehensive to include drawing because they do not feel comfortable about it themselves.
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