Illustrating the Basics

I find it useful to draw pictures when I’m trying to wrap my head around new things. I started illustrating the basic structure of these courses with loops. I started off creating loops in Miro. I think it looks kind of like a lightbulb.

This section includes assignment sequences for courses that I have taught with the strategies in this book. I have found a basic structure that works in my classroom that is best illustrated with the image below. All courses in this section are built around four major assignments that ask students to narrate their experience with a creative work they’ve chosen. The basic structure of the assignments is the same so students get more comfortable with the process as they make their way through the course. I’ve made slight modifications and adjustments to this basic assignment for different areas of emphasis.

But that illustration just shows one student making their way through a course. In reality, you have a class of 20 (or 35…or 40!) students looping in many different directions. That can seem overwhelming, but it’s really quite fun. I tried to illustrate that the chaos is organized within specific assignments and the shared activities all students do as they loop in lots of different directions. Here’s what the basic structure looks like when used in a course like Nineteenth Century Literature. I played around in Illustrator and Canva to create this. The loops remind me of particle tracks through a bubble chamber.