Telling stories (and laughing) with my first period Spanish 3 class.
I love that my day starts in the classroom.
I create lots of resources here at Ditch That Textbook. I still do workshops at schools and keynote speeches at conferences. I still write books.
But I’m fortunate to get to teach part-time, face-to-face, every single day in the classroom.
I love it for lots of reasons. (My students make me laugh every day … that’s one!)
It gives me LOTS of real-life ideas and experiences that I can share with you here and on social media.
For one, I just shared how I’m using the photocopier to scan student graphic organizers — then use AI to show me patterns and trends in their work I haven’t seen.
(This one is kind of blowing up on social media right now! Are you following me there?)
I also shared on Monday about how my high school Spanish students are drawing more than ever in class. It’s been a great catalyst for learning!
In today’s 💡 Big Idea, I share research behind “drawing to learn” — and how you can apply it in class right away.
Inside:
🤖 Help students handle their business with AI
👀 DTT Digest: 4 resources worth checking out
👥 Community: When your think-aloud follows you home
💻 Tech Tip: Hands-on civics with EduProtocols, Legos, & gummy bears!
💡 The Big Idea: Why research recommends students “drawing to learn”
😄 Smile of the day: Brace yourself …
👋 How we can help
🤖 Help students handle their business with AI
We know that AI is expanding … and whether we like it or not, our students will need to know how to handle their business with it.
(We also know that lots of students are already using it … sometimes, in ways we don’t appreciate …)
Can we help students learn the implications of AI — AND still teach the content they need to teach?
I’ve found that the answer is “YES.”
In my newest book, AI Literacy in Any Class, I share practical ways to keep teaching your class content — but slip little AI literacy lessons into it.
It helps students identify AI-generated work … understand the ethical implications of using it … know when using AI has gone too far … and more.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Matt gives us great ideas that we can use with whatever we teach to help our students realize what AI is and how it can help them and the risks that come with this powerful technology.” — Al Gonzalez (via Amazon)
👀 DTT Digest
4 teaching resources worth checking out today
🪐 Explore the solar system in 3D — NASA's Eyes is a suite of 3D visualization applications that allows everyone to explore and understand real NASA data and imagery in a fun and interactive way.
💻 10 AI presentation tools to level up your lessons — Need slides? We’ve got you covered. Check out these 10 tools that’ll help you make them look good.
🔎 Personalize learning with explore boards — Give students some choice in how they learn new material. Like a choice board for new material!
ICYMI 🙋🏾♂️ Teach students how to respond to a question in Google Classroom — In this Google Applied Digital Skills lesson students will log into Google Classroom, join a class, and respond to a question from their teacher.
👥 COMMUNITY 👥
🧠 When your think-aloud follows you home
After Don Sturm’s wife didn't solve the NYT crossword puzzle, Don walked her through how he'd cracked it.
Her reaction? Less "that's helpful" … more "are you showing off?" 😅
"It made me realize how deeply ingrained teaching strategies can become." — Don Sturm
Making our thinking visible is one of the most useful things we do for students. But outside the classroom, when no one is asking to be taught, the same move can land… differently! Turns out a lot of us have a teacher voice we can't quite switch off:
"If my son asks for scissors: Go to the office from the doorway, take 3 steps slightly right and locate the office chair… The scissors will be handle up near the back of the container. My family is well adjusted to my teacher mode, but others not so much." — Stacey Telgren
"When my sister was planning her wedding… she loudly announced, 'Don't use your principal voice with me!' I had no idea. I was just doing what I always did." — Susan McCandless
"Many teaching skills are proving useful when trying to help an elderly parent use tech! I also find when out with a group of friends I'm constantly counting to make sure no one has wandered off." — Gillian Bratley
"My husband asks me how to spell things often. Without thinking about it, I sometimes break the word down into Latin or Greek roots… Though he patiently listens, he just wanted to know how to spell the word." — Lisa Insalaco
What do you think? You can open this full this discussion and add your thoughts here: Teaching Strategies in the Wild
Not a member yet? Join the free DTT Community to read ideas like this, connect with other educators, discuss, and share ideas of your own.
💻 TECH TIP 💻
👋 Hands-on civics with EduProtocols, Legos, & gummy bears!
Legos and gummy bears? Your students will LOVE this. Image: Angela Smith
Looking for an engaging, hands-on way to assess student understanding without a traditional paper test? Try this "Build and Tell" project from Ditch That Textbook community member Angela Smith, a U.S. history and civics teacher in Edison, New Jersey.
Note: Angela gave a huge shoutout to the EduProtocols community and her fellow Civics teachers for inspiring this variation on the classic Sketch & Tell!
Instead of a standard quiz on the forms of government, her 8th graders are building physical models of different governments using Legos and using gummy bears as their citizens. Afterward, they explain their creation, analyzing its advantages and disadvantages in a digital slide deck.
Here’s how she breaks down the process in short 42-minute class periods:
🗓️ The 3-Day Project Breakdown
Day 1: Set the Standard & Assign Governments
Review project directions and the scoring rubric.
Rubric Calibration: Groups evaluate a democracy model from last year’s class (some good, some purposely lacking). Evaluating past work helps students internalize criteria—they’re usually tougher graders than I am!
Fair Assignment: Groups spin a Wheel of Names to assign each form of government so every model type is represented.
Groups begin brainstorming their design.
Day 2: Peer Feedback & Construction
Groups give peer feedback on initial design sketches and start building with Legos and gummy bears.
Digital Exit Ticket: Before the bell rings, students take a photo of their progress, post it to Padlet, and type in their goals for Day 3.
Day 3 (or 4): Finish & "Tell"
Groups complete their physical models and finish the "Tell" section of their slides (explaining the structure, advantages, and disadvantages).
📂 Want to try it out?
💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡
🎨 Why research recommends students “drawing to learn”
Drawing can be a powerful learning tool. (Image: Google Gemini)
On Monday, I told you about how my students draw to learn in class.
I talked about doing fun drawing warm-up activities … illustrating vocabulary words … drawing as formative assessment … and even my drawings on the big dry erase board to aid in my instruction.
I already knew there was some research behind the power of images and text in instruction. I always reach for these two:
Dual coding theory: Your brain learns through words AND through nonverbal objects/events (imagery).
Picture superiority effect: Pictures / symbols are more likely to be remembered than words. (Dual coding helps explain why this happens.)
But when I really started to dig into it, there’s a LOT that drawing can do to help your students learn … MUCH more than I realized.
Let’s dig into some of my favorite findings …
The “drawing effect”
When you draw something you’re trying to remember, you’re more likely to recall it later than if you simply wrote it down. (Wammes, Meade, & Fernandes. 2016)
The physical act of drawing creates a richer “memory trace” by combining meaning + visual representation + the physical movement.
PS: Pictures don’t have to be good art. The learning comes from representing the idea, not producing pretty drawings.
Classroom application: Students can make quick sketches of information they need to remember. They can sketch vocabulary words. They can add small drawings beside key concepts in notes. They can draw characters or events from a story. Or they can even create simple visuals for important terms.
Students generate meaning when they draw
When students have to draw something, they’re doing a LOT in the background: selecting what’s important, organizing it, integrating it with what they already know. (Van Meter & Garner 2005)
Example: In my Spanish class, if a student had to draw the sentence: El chico corre detrás del perro (the boy runs behind the dog) … they’d have to decide:
Who’s chasing whom?
Where does detrás del perro put the boy spatially?
What does corre look like?
What is a perro — and how does it fit in the picture?
Switching between representations — verbal/words to visual/images — can help students learn AND show what they’ve learned.
Classroom application: Students can translate information from one form/representation to another. Examples: Draw a sentence. Turn a paragraph into a diagram. Sketch out a timeline of events in a story. Show your math problem visually. Draw the different parts of a scientific process.
Using drawing to check comprehension
Researchers compared students showing what they’ve learned through visual explanations (drawing) and verbal explanations (words). (Bobek & Tversky 2016)
If students can give visual explanations of a concept (instead of just writing about them), it can improve their understanding. Plus, when you try to represent an idea visually, it can help the teacher better see gaps in your understanding. (The students can also see their own gaps, too.)
It’s a different way for students to show what they comprehend — and a whole different set of data for you, the teacher, to better understand what they understand.
Classroom application: Instead of always asking students to tell you what they understand, you can (from time to time) ask them to SHOW you. Say: Draw how this works. Sketch what happened. Show the relationship between these ideas. Draw what this sentence means.
Drawing can become retrieval practice
Retrieval practice is the idea that students recall new learning from memory without the aid of textbooks, notes, or other resources. Retrieval improves learning across educational levels, subject areas, delays, test types, and formats. (Agarwal, Nunes & Blunt 2021)
Drawing can be a form of retrieval — if students have to create the drawing from memory. You can ask them to draw a cell while looking at a diagram. But if they put the diagram away and draw it from memory? That’s retrieval.
During a quick draw activity, if designed properly, students are simultaneously:
expressing creativity
doing retrieval practice
representing learning visually
engaging the motor act of drawing
producing with new vocabulary
Classroom application: Put stuff away and do a quick draw from memory. Examples: Draw and label everything you remember about the water cycle. Sketch the historical event we talked about yesterday. Illustrate the sentence I just read.
Drawing can get students discussing class content
When my students draw on mini dry erase boards, I always have them show others their drawings. I feel that it builds community and gets them interacting with each other.
But it also creates a shared learning experience — they’re talking, interpreting, reacting, and remembering TOGETHER.
Researchers have explored collaborative drawing as a way to get students to represent and processing academic ideas together. In one study with fifth and sixth graders, the students drew science concepts together. The students that were given a structured collaborative process showed greater gains in their understanding. (van Dijk, Gijlers, & Weinberger 2014)
Drawing starts as individual thinking. But once students put the drawing in front of someone else, it can become something concrete to discuss, question, interpret, and explain.
Classroom application: Turn the drawing into a conversation. Have partners guess what each other's drawings represent. Examples: Ask a classmate to explain their choices. Ask about something that's missing. Compare two different ways of representing something. Have students work together to revise someone’s drawing.
What’s your experience with drawing in class?
We’ve been discussing the “draw to learn” concept in the free DTT online community!
Let us know …
How do your students draw in your class?
What has been your experience with the connection between drawing and learning?
What do you think of this research?
How could you see the findings of this research being applied in your class?
Any other research you know of that’s relevant to this?
Please join the conversation — and see what others are saying!
😄 Smile of the day
You’ve been warned …
Source: DigitalMomsBlog
👋 How we can help
There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:
Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.
Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.
Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!
