Teaching Synthesis? Draw Scrambled Art.
A 30 minute activity full of laughs and drawing to introduce students to the skill of synthesizing.
Welcome to the Plug & Play section of Desk Notes! Every week you’ll receive an ELA/creative writing activity that I’ve had success with in my classroom.
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TLDR: Mixing up how to draw instructions and then having students work together to figure out the original pictures helps them see that synthesis is a path to more complete understandings.
I want my students to understand that synthesis enables them to get a more complete picture of the truth. One source gives you one angle, two sources gives you either a debate or hasty consensus, but the more sources you have, the closer you get to really understanding something.
To teach this, I have them draw. (I think it’s fun to have my students draw in class. If you read about my Telestrations activity, this isn’t news to you.)
In this activity, students are given how-to-draw instructions. The instructions they get, however, are incomplete and a jumble of steps from multiple guides. Students try their best to draw exactly what the instructions tell them and later work with their classmates to figure out what the original drawings were supposed to be.
The Plan
Overview:
Prepare the materials.
Part 1 (drawing).
Part 2 (searching for the right instructions).
Discussion and connection.
Ideas for extending the activity.
Prepare the Materials
Print out the drawing instructions (google doc version) and cut each step out as individual strips. Shuffle them up. Like, really shuffle them. Take steps from drawing 1 and mix them into the instructions for drawing 2 and 3, etc. The more chaotic the better.
Each student needs 3-5 of the steps from the shuffled papers. If you have a class of 30, you’d need to print out 3 or 4 copies of the pdf.
Additionally, each student will need a piece of paper to draw on.
Part 1 Instructions
The start of this activity is meant to be a bit vague, surprising, silly, and chaotic. Embrace the chaos. Here’s how the instructions sound:
“Alright students, you have a piece of paper in front of you. This is the new canvas for your life’s work. I expect absolute perfection. Beautiful art. I will give you a few strips of paper. These are instructions for what you must draw. Now, listen carefully. You must look at the steps one at a time. Start with the first one and draw what it says. Then look at the next one. Don’t look at them all at once. The instructions may confuse you, they may seem a little odd, they may make you wonder what it even is that you’re drawing. But you must do your very best to follow the instructions as they are written and make an amazing picture. Okay?”
Pass out the strips of paper and let them have at it.
They will be confused and maybe even a bit frustrated, but help them have fun with it. Ideally, their drawings will be silly.
Here are two of my favorites from last year:
Part 2 Instructions
Take some time to let students show their drawings to each other. Then transition to part 2.
“Okay, these drawings are wonderful. Absolute masterpieces. Let me tell you where these instructions came from. I had 3 pictures with ‘how-to-draw’ instructions, and I combined and shuffled up all of the steps. Your next task is to get with a few people and go around the room, talk with others, and figure out which steps belong to which drawing. I’m not telling you what the three drawings are supposed to be, that’s for you to figure out. Get ready to move around the room, and work with your classmates to figure out which instructions belong to which drawing. What were the three original drawings?”
Sometimes I give students the hint that each drawing has 10 steps, but sometimes I don’t. Give them time to walk around and share their strips of papers with others.
Discussion & Connection
After students think they have it figured out, have them share what they think the three drawings are supposed to be. Depending on time you could have students draw the original pictures on the board. (Sometimes I queue up AI generated versions of these drawings instead/just for fun.)
“This unit we’re going to focus on a skill called synthesizing. Has anyone heard this word before? The idea is that when we synthesize, we bring together many pieces to see how they might connect. What are some ways we did this in the activity?”
Students share things like:
When we had to draw things step by step. We had to add them together.
When we had to go around the room to find all the right instructions.
I had to combine what I knew about my instructions talked with what others knew from their instructions.
“These are all great connections. Now here’s another question. If we were to do research and learn about some topic, how might we use synthesis in that scenario?”
The purpose of this is for students to realize that researching is a process of combining multiple sources and ideas together. Lead them in this direction.
“Right. Now, some of you maybe had guesses of what the original three drawings were. Maybe you visualized something in your mind. It wasn’t until you talked with a lot of classmates, however, (a.k.a. consulted a lot of sources), that you were able to combine all the steps together and see the full picture. The same goes with research. When we’re trying to learn about a topic, we may have our idea of what it means. As we find many sources, however, and synthesize them together, it helps us get a clearer, more accurate picture of the truth.”
Ideas for Extending the Activity
I use this lesson as part of my introduction to a research unit. This progresses into students choosing their own topic and synthesizing their findings.
I usually hang up student drawings around the room. Throughout the research unit I’m able to point to the drawings and help jog their memory about synthesis.
Have students consider how synthesis occurs in multiple disciplines.
If you have a specific topic for students to research have them do an initial conversational survey with their classmates. They could gather qualitative data about what other people think about a topic.
Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear from you if you use this activity or any adaptations of it in your class! If you find something that makes it better, let us know in the comments.
Cheers,
Brandon Merrill
Thats so fun!
Good post. That's creative!