Using Storyboards to Encourage Student Thinking and Participation
Storyboards are visual organizers designed to bring out a class’s best thinking on a specific topic. Storyboards can be used for brainstorming sessions, planning, problem solving, organizing, or otherwise capturing thoughts in a visual and flexible way. They can be used in all content areas and grade levels.
You and your students might be familiar with how storyboards are laid out in sequence as a visualization technique to create movies. In fact, Walt Disney made the process popular and most feature film companies use storyboards today. There is even classroom software available for creating storyboards.
By creating a storyboard composed of words rather than pictures, we offer a twist on the concept that preserves the visual appeal of a traditional storyboard.
how you can use a storyboard in your classroom.
Storyboards are a way to display thinking visually. They encourage meaningful student involvement, increase participation, and enhance teamwork.
A storyboard can be a designated area such as a bulletin board or it might be an area of the chalkboard, whiteboard, or even a wall. You can use index cards (3 different sizes) and push pins or you can use Post-It Notes (3 different sizes) for your storyboard.
How a Storyboard Works
One 5" x 7" card or large Post-It Note is affixed to the top of the storyboard indicating the topic to be discussed. An example of a topic is World War II.
Beneath the topic card are 4" x 6" cards or medium-size Post-It Notes representing headings which are subsets of the topic. These are called headers. You may have as many or as few headers as you wish. Four or five is a good rule of thumb. Examples of headers relating to World War II are Famous People, Events Preceding, Geography/Maps, Timeline, and Impact Today.
You choose the topic and the header cards, then your students take over the storyboarding process. Choose a student to be the printer and another to be the pinner. The rest of the students contribute ideas and thoughts.
As students discuss the topic, the designated printer captures the essence of each person’s thought into a phrase, prints it on a 3" x 5" card or small Post-It Note, and hands it to a pinner. The pinner affixes the index cards or Post-It Notes to the storyboard beneath the appropriate header.
These 3" x 5" cards or small Post-It Notes represent student thinking. You may have students share as many or as few ideas as you wish or that time permits. Four or five per header is a good rule of thumb and gives many students a chance to participate.
Examples of idea or thinking cards (with additional information students may provide in parentheses) under the Famous People header are
President Franklin Roosevelt (fireside chats)
General George Patton (military leader; commanded forces in Morocco)
Adolf Hitler (Holocaust; Germany)
Joseph Stalin (Soviet leader)
Benito Mussolini (Italian; lead fascism movement)
Examples of idea or thinking cards under the Events Preceding header are
Fascism (dictatorship)
Treaty of Versailles
Great Depression (stock market crash; rise of Hitler)
You can ask the pinner to avoid overlapping or leaving a large gap between the cards so you can later remove the pins (if necessary) and connect the cards by running a piece of tape down the center of each one then folding them accordion-style to save in a file for future use.
Allow for creativity and innovation to happen, remain neutral, and encourage an open and balanced flow of ideas. You are facilitating the process, not the content. Debrief once the storyboard is built.
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Hsieh, Y. J., & Cifuentes, L. (2003). A cross-cultural study of the effect of student-generated visualization on middle school students’
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Jensen, E. (2000). Teaching with the brain in mind. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
O’Donnell, A.M., Dansereau, D. F., & Hall, R. H. (2002). Knowledge maps as scaffolds for cognitive processing.
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Source: The above tips are based on PLS's graduate course Brain-Based Ways We Think and Learn®. For more information see "Featured Onsite Graduate Course" to the right.
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