Developing a Photographic Memory: The Use of Bullet Sketchbooks and Junk Journals as a Tool for All Learning Styles
Location
Kennedy Union Torch Lounge
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
11-3-2024 11:30 AM
Description
Student learning styles are expansive. Not every student can read a chapter each week and process the necessary information. The distractions are vast. In an attempt to make students commit to their chapter readings without having to use quizzes and tests as the constant mediator, I use Bullet Sketchbooks or Junk Journals for weekly grades. Simplified, these are the directions I give students:
- Read the chapter that you have due for class. Concentrate on important facts, details, names, and events.
- In the same way that you have taken notes over any text from the beginning of your schooling until now, take notes! The notes will be added on top of, next to, around, and throughout the layers of texture you have created in class or on your own.
- Layers: Add drawings, tiny paintings, ripped up book pages, washi tape, receipts, leaves, photos, poems, magazine clippings, coloring book pages, architectural floor plans, grocery lists, pieces of fabric, fortune cookie papers, sand, cat hair, flyers from campus, candy wrappers, old quizzes, dryer lint, foil, trash, doodles from other classes, items from nature. Now go back to No. 2.
- In class, items come up that feel important, and you want to highlight these new tidbits. The instructor might say an important point that you want to remember. A classmate may have insight which blows your mind. Grab a sticky note! Add it on top of a chapter page.
- If you have spent time layering your pages ahead of time or gathering markers to write with or dividing your pages into boxes — whatever is your style — you are more likely to pay attention to the words you are writing down from the chapter. You add important details and you focus on them. You take a mental photo of that page and those words. You enjoy them. They speak to you.
Many students remember and care about their readings so much more with this method.
Developing a Photographic Memory: The Use of Bullet Sketchbooks and Junk Journals as a Tool for All Learning Styles
Kennedy Union Torch Lounge
Student learning styles are expansive. Not every student can read a chapter each week and process the necessary information. The distractions are vast. In an attempt to make students commit to their chapter readings without having to use quizzes and tests as the constant mediator, I use Bullet Sketchbooks or Junk Journals for weekly grades. Simplified, these are the directions I give students:
- Read the chapter that you have due for class. Concentrate on important facts, details, names, and events.
- In the same way that you have taken notes over any text from the beginning of your schooling until now, take notes! The notes will be added on top of, next to, around, and throughout the layers of texture you have created in class or on your own.
- Layers: Add drawings, tiny paintings, ripped up book pages, washi tape, receipts, leaves, photos, poems, magazine clippings, coloring book pages, architectural floor plans, grocery lists, pieces of fabric, fortune cookie papers, sand, cat hair, flyers from campus, candy wrappers, old quizzes, dryer lint, foil, trash, doodles from other classes, items from nature. Now go back to No. 2.
- In class, items come up that feel important, and you want to highlight these new tidbits. The instructor might say an important point that you want to remember. A classmate may have insight which blows your mind. Grab a sticky note! Add it on top of a chapter page.
- If you have spent time layering your pages ahead of time or gathering markers to write with or dividing your pages into boxes — whatever is your style — you are more likely to pay attention to the words you are writing down from the chapter. You add important details and you focus on them. You take a mental photo of that page and those words. You enjoy them. They speak to you.
Many students remember and care about their readings so much more with this method.
