Sketchnotes can make everyday teaching easier, more enriching and more enjoyable. Visualisations can clarify processes and rules, explain grammar concepts, illustrate vocabulary, serve as a starting point for reflection, summarise texts and present content compactly in a small space. Images promote emotional engagement with the content being taught and encourage learners to produce and use visual content themselves.
I really enjoy using sketchnotes in my own everyday teaching, but ultimately not as often as I would like to. I find that I am most successful with sketchnotes when I simply start working on them spontaneously after coming up with an idea, without thinking too much about it. Otherwise, I run the risk of getting lost in the search for the ideal visualisation that can cover all aspects of a topic – and never finishing.
This semester, I have increasingly used sketchnotes as a starting point for reflection and to illustrate rules that are important to me. Precisely because of the emotional connection we build with images, they seem very well suited to these areas and also help me to clarify what is important to me and why.
At the beginning of the semester, I place great importance on ensuring that the basic rules of cooperation in the course are clear to everyone – and this visualised presentation, which I have been using for three semesters now, achieves this much better than words alone.
Since the first group work of the semester did not go smoothly in all groups, I summarised what I believe to be particularly important for teamwork in the following graphic. The graphic then served as a basis for reflecting on the group work with the students.
I also think it is very important to be aware of learning processes. To this end, at the beginning of the semester, I asked the learners to think about which situations in their lives as German learners they would classify as their comfort zone, their growth zone and their danger zone. The learners kept their notes and at the end of the semester we will repeat the exercise to see what has changed since the beginning of the semester.
Last but not least, habe ich in diesem Semester immer wieder Arbeitsanweisungen gesketched – mit der Hoffnung, dass durch die visuelle Unterstützung noch klarer wird, was in welcher Reihenfolge zu tun ist. Nachdem ich in den letzten Monaten in meinen Videoprojekten Text meist mit der Hand geschrieben habe, habe ich jetzt auch hier der Einfachheit halber mit der Hand geschrieben, was dem Ganzen auch noch eine kleine persönliche Note gibt. 🙂
