Draw it so that you’ll know it!

Condense information into a picture and embrace the power of color. Teachers often present information verbally and linguistically. However, many of our students are visual learners. A substantial amount of our brainpower is devoted to visual processing. When teachers add visual learning strategies to what they are teaching, student recall improves.

For example, after teaching for five or six minutes (or up to ten minutes in a high school class), give students three to five minutes to draw a picture, diagram, or symbol of what they just learned. This visual learning strategy lets students take the verbal linguistic information we just taught and turn it into visual information. This lets the brain process and use information in a different way that, in turn, helps students better remember what has been taught.

When we use drawing exercises in the classroom, we often encounter resistance from students. They complain that they can’t draw. One way to address this is to draw badly when we draw in the classroom. Use stick figure drawings and emphasize the importance of simple line drawings over drawing well. The point is to create an image that helps us remember what we’ve learned, not to get graded on our art.

If students say they can’t draw, pair them up with someone who doesn’t mind drawing. It would be a shame to lose students because of their initial resistance to doing something so different from what they are used to doing in school.

Snapshot Devices

Another way to present information visually is to use a snapshot device. Snapshot devices take the concepts we have already talked about to another level; their purpose is to take a snapshot of information and represent it visually so students will remember it. For instance, you’ve taught about how the West was settled and explained that certain inventions were involved, such as the six-shooter, the windmill, the sod house, the locomotive, and barbed wire.

A snapshot device is a picture with all of the things you have taught in it. It’s a scene, not just a collection of individual pictures. If you draw pictures of a six-shooter, a windmill, and a sod house with no way to relate these things to each other, then you are drawing ‘unconnected’ images. With a snapshot device, you take the information and make it into a scene to think about. Students will remember the cowboy with the six-shooters and the train coming down the hill behind the sod house. They will see the scene in their mind’s eye.

Assessing with Visuals

When students engage in drawing what they have learned, teachers have an opportunity to walk around the room and assess understanding by looking at students’ drawings and asking questions for clarification. Document your observations and you will have a form of authentic and immediate ongoing assessment.


RTI Strategies for Secondary TeachersFor more information on differentiation and Response to Intervention, see Susan Fitzell’s book, RTI Strategies for Secondary Teachers.

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