20 Instructional Strategies That Engage the Brain: #2 Drawing and Artwork
My son, Christopher, draws beautifully! In ninth grade, Chris had a science teacher who incorporated drawing as a consistent strategy during instruction. Students would draw scientific processes such as mitosis or meiosis. While due to his characteristics of attention deficit disorder, Chris was not faring well in his other classes, yet, he was making an A in her class. When parent-teacher conference night came, I asked her to reveal the secret as to why Chris was so enamored of her class, I ascertained that she was using many of the brain-compatible strategies delineated in my books. Drawing was one of the main ones.
For more than 90 years, researchers have written about the positive relationship between thinking in art and thinking across the curriculum. In 1934, John Dewey related that thinking in art precedes thinking in other areas. Yet, when the budget becomes tight, the art program is thought to be expendable.
Could it be that when teachers are using the arts (i.e. drawing, music, and drama) to teach the content areas of language arts, mathematics, science, or social studies, they are addressing both left and right hemispheres of the brain? It certainly gives us food for thought.
What the Research Says
Drawing improves hand-eye coordination, boosts our ability to solve problems, increases the brain’s attention span while focusing on a single task, and assists students’ understanding of the content areas of writing and math (Okuha, 2023).
Drawing simultaneously taps into the linguistic, kinesthetic, and visual areas of the brain enabling students to process information in three different ways (Fernandes et. al., 2018).
Math books in Singapore teach students to draw models in an effort to visualize math problems prior to solving them (Prystay, 2004).
Make It Happen
Allow students to create a personal Pictionary by illustrating assigned content-area vocabulary words. Each page of the Pictionary consists of an assigned word written in color, a drawing that depicts the meaning of the word, and an original sentence using the word in the appropriate context. For example, in science, students could draw and describe the following forms of mechanical weathering: frost weathering, exfoliation, thermal expansion, crystal growth, tree roots, and abrasion.
Have students select a particular culture or social group and make a collage, either by drawing or by collecting pictures, of the commonly held values, beliefs, traditions, and behaviors that are characteristic of the culture. As students display their collages, assist them in making comparisons between cultures and determining similarities and differences.
Give students a math word problem to read and then have them draw a series of pictures illustrating their understanding of what is actually happening in each step of the problem. Have them use pictures to assist them writing the numerical symbols for the word problem.
For additional research and more specific examples of instructional activities that engage students in the strategy of Drawing and Artwork, consult Chapter 2 in the 4th edition of my best-selling book, Engaging the Brain: 20 Unforgettable Strategies for Growing Dendrites and Accelerating Learning.
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