What if there were never any practical parts to certification tests? A part of the test that checks your manual skills and not just your ability to answer multiple choice questions correctly.  For instance, you are working toward your ASE certification in auto mechanics. You study your books, go to your classes, and then the day of the certification test. It is a 100 multiple choice questions.  Sure, it might show that you understand the correct firing pattern of an engine or the correct radius of a brake pad, but does it truly show your understanding of how to repair or replace these parts?

Why is that any different in schools?  I am not just referencing the plight of schools over-testing our students, but are the tests and problems assigned to them the best way to know what they know?  The best way to check their competency? A method I found to check for this understanding, that reaches all students, is a visual representation of their learning.  Allow students to draw, create, produce, or just find images of what they are learning.

Drawing stimulates

According to Milton Glaser, by creating with what is being learned causes the learner to “deeply, intensely attentive” (Helen, 2015). He later explains that this attentiveness brings a fuller grasp of the content, to recognize the details.  The process of drawing and creating develops a deeper cognition to the content at hand. Encouraging the student to think about what she is thinking, or experiencing a meta-cognitive development. In AVID, this form of creation is called a non-linguistic representation.  I prefer the layman’s term of tattoo, graffiti, or sketch.

A sketch or drawing could just be the notes and not just something that is created after the notes.  Sketchnotes has grown in popularity over the past years. Its focus on the visual representation of the notes and not just textual has encouraged many that rarely got use from their notes. Sketchnotes encourage students to be creative, and brain-friendly, in a not normally creative outlet (Miller, 2018).

Finally, after the drawings are created, encourage your students to write about their drawings.  As the drawings have stimulated a deeper level of cognition, the writing should be deeper as well.  Students that originally did not have much to write, will have more to write. Have them explain why they used the images that they did.  They can explain their color choices, placement of certain icons, connections to the material. The writing can be either done in the same app or download the image and then transfer the image into your favorite word processing app.