Leaning into My Growth Mindset

For the last year or so I have become very interested in the #doodles or #sketchnotes that I have seen on my twitter feed. It started with masters like:

and...It was their ability to make their notes visually appealing that drew me to their tweets. At first I thought, "those are beautiful but I can't draw". Then a few weeks ago, 6 to be exact, I came across www.Sketch50.org. It was a challenge to "embrace perfection", value "process over pretty", and "lean into your growth mindset".

So I dove in:

You can see at first I was hesitant but it was nice that they provided a scaffolded approach. There are ideas to sketch and they seem to start easy (fonts, letters, numbers, arrows) to harder (week 6 is hobbies and free time)

I began to incorporate colors.

Outside of the weekly themes there is encouragement to try to "Level Up". I chose to level up by taking #sketchnotes on our 6th graders TED Talks. That's when I had my biggest a-ha moment. During each of their speeches I was prepared to take my sketchnotes. I had a bank of markers and was prepared to doodle. I realized that this process forced me as a listener to be more engaged. Not only was I listening to what the speaker was saying but I was trying to visualize images that I could draw in my notes. It was this process of visualizing images that I could see leading to deeper learning, more meaningful memories, and making connections. As an educator I know that when a student is visualizing and making connections comprehension is going to increase. Furthermore, I realized that in order to create high quality sketchnotes I needed to synthesize the information on the fly. I couldn't just write down what they said, I needed to find the themes, the key points, and images that connected them all together.

I found this incredibly valuable as an adult and can envision how this can help so many learners of all ages. As an elementary educator it struck me how so many of our students begin as doodlers and then move to words. Sketchnoting embraces what came naturally to all of us as we began to learn to write.

Those of you just learning about #sketch50 now, it's never too late. Join us! Lean into your growth mindset! The community has been very welcoming. The website has many How To images that helped me a great deal like these.

The community is full of encouragement, liking and retweeting your attempts. It has been a great experience to grow professionally.

Those of you taking part in #sketch50, what are your thoughts? Why did you start? What have you learned? Do you use this with your students? I'd love to continue the conversation.