Last semester Joan talked to me about the idea of student doodling. If I remember the conversation right, she meant that students should be able to doodle during class, and that contrary to traditional opinion, people can simultaneously doodle and pay attention. This idea shouldn’t have been revolutionary to me, but it kind of was.

I decided to take the doodle idea a step further from what I believe Joan initially meant. I had my English Honors 1 students doodle in class while we read Pygmalion. The objective was that the doodles would represent details of the play. Since there are five acts in Pygmalion, I asked students to organize their notes into five sections. I really didn’t give a lot of rules. I actually didn’t give a rubric or a grade sheet at all, and I probably wouldn’t have graded these doodles except that I wanted to acknowledge their commitment, so I ended up giving some points for this assignment. What I eventually told the students was that I would assess their doodle notes based on two criteria: effort and comprehension. The doodles needed to be thorough and by looking at the doodles, I wanted to easily ascertain that they had comprehended the play.

I was pretty pleased with the results. Here are a couple of examples of student doodles. As you can see, students organized their doodles in ways that were logical to them. Some used color; some didn’t. These examples show that students did indeed put effort into this assignment and they comprehended the text. 

One reason this assignment worked was because students read the play in class. The problem with the assignment arose when students needed to read a part in the play and they wanted to doodle at the same time. They would lose their place in the play and when their lines came up, there would be an annoying pause until the student realized it was their turn to speak.

Since I felt that this assignment was a little innovative, the students enjoyed it and it helped with engagement and comprehension, I thought I would try it with my English 1 students also. However, this doodle note taking is kind of bombing with my regular students. I don’t think it’s the students, however. I think it’s the reading. We’re reading Of Mice and Men, and the novel is not being read solely in class nor out loud, so students have to read themselves, annotate the text, doodle and answer questions. There are too many components to this unit. It’s overkill. If we listened to an audio of Of Mice and Men together, and their only assignment was to doodle during that time, the doodling would be more successful. As it is now, doodling feels for them and for me like one more thing to do.