Creating Finished Student Art from Academic Subject Visual Notes!

From Scholastic>>> http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2016/03/visual-note-taking-keep-focus-and-improve-retention 

Here's an out-of-the-box opportunity to get some art into academic classes and get some academic learning into art classes... or any combination or permutation of this... could be powerful, highly motivating learning!

Follow the good ideas and suggestion from the Scholastic article and then, bring these notes into the 'Art Learning Space' be that a formal Art class or even simply some time out from the regular, academic classroom to consider Art for a change, and engage in some creativity... curate, arrange, re-arrange, collage, add captions and/or other visual elements to, RE-color - Touch-up - Embellish the notes as they were taken... and on and on as your students MAKE a finished piece for exhibition (or to be scanned and digitized to be added to a virtual exhibition). This models PROCESS and its relationship to PRODUCT and the act of thinking and

spontaneously creating... 

"Visual Note-Taking: Keep Focus and Improve Retention

If you’ve ever read author Dav Pilkey’s story on his school years, you know that our young doodlers shouldn’t be shunned for their artistic pursuits. He tells about years of being in trouble for writing and drawing in class, only to become a favorite children’s author and illustrator today. Have you sat through a conference or presentation lately? A meeting where you found yourself playing online instead of paying attention? Maybe some artistic time would help you focus. Guess what? It would help students too.
Visual note-taking is nothing new, but it is making waves online as we share more and more information visually. Also called graphic visualization or sketch noting, you might be taking notes this way already. Visual note-taking is more than just doodling. It is a way to synthesize information; carve out the most important points and use images to convey the message simply and effectively.
Two educator friends, Amy Mount and Amanda Koonlaba, shared some of their recent notes as examples. Koonlaba says she has just always doodled with her note-taking. Mount also wrote a post about using sketch notes professionally and comments that using the hashtag #sketchnote can lead to shared note-taking. These women show how varied our creative skills can be, and also that we don’t have to be artists to take meaningful sketches.

Studies show that note-taking enables recall and the synthesis of new information. Doodling can significantly increase the amount of retained information, according to a 2009 study. It says that even if doodling is not intentionally related to the listening task, more recall occurs. And while an article published through the Center for Teaching Quality suggests students might initially push back and be unsure of their artistic ability, I’ve found young students are willing to break out the markers. It’s a great opportunity for capturing their enthusiasm at a young age and building note-taking skills.

Selecting the Right Lesson
Young students need lots of scaffolding and direction for any new skill. First, think about the information you want to tell students and what’s most important for them to know. We were covering different kinds of folktales. I don’t care if students remember or memorize every element, but I wanted them to understand how these types of stories are related and how they are different. We were practicing reading and responding to various genres (RL.3.2) throughout the week.
For our lesson, students worked with a different type of folktale each day, from the Grade 3 version of 25 Complex Texts to Meet the Common Core. (Side note: These come in every level and I’ve used them for years. They are great texts and easy to differentiate while keeping the rigor!) Students had previously read some myths and fables from our reading series, but we had not broken the genre apart. I folded two sheets of 8" x 14" paper into a booklet for each student because I thought they would be more likely to doodle when they didn’t have lines..."

Read the full article at its source: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2016/03/visual-note-taking-keep-focus-and-improve-retention