In my last post, The Beginning, I talked about sharing your imagination with students. One excellent way to show students your imagination is with drawing starts/challenges.

Students need to be imaginative, and so do teachers.

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Working with 3rd grade students a few years ago, we started each day with a drawing start. This activity allowed for students to begin their day with a dose of imagination and that carried over into the rest of our day.

Take a moment to look through some of these ideas that you could possibly use with your students. How might you use the 10-1-10 protocol to help build your student’s imagination? You might be wondering what the 10-1-10 protocol is and how it influences imagination. Read on to find out.

The 10-1-10 protocol is set up so students draw the same item three times. The first time is for ten seconds, the second time for one minute, and the third time for ten minutes. Each iteration allows for more detail and imagination to occur. It’s extremely powerful for students to think about details etc. during this protocol.

As students work on drawing or creating something that goes with each day’s challenge, students begin to see how others create and think. Great conversations begin to occur and it begins to foster a community of imaginateers. Students need to be imaginative, and so do teachers. The challenge is to put your imagination out there for the students to see. What would happen to the culture in your building if you begin to showcase each other’s imaginations by posting an explanation? What would happen if students built with pipe cleaners instead of drawing?

Think of the power our imaginations have together. Each of our students has an imagination, we just need to tap into it. Leave a comment with one of your favorite ways to draw out students’ imaginations. I’d love to hear what others are doing to promote imagination throughout the day. Coming up will be a post on how to use these drawing challenges within other content areas. Stay tuned 🏔