Product Description

This first day of school high school art lesson is great for any subject as a back-to-school icebreaker activity. It can be done via distance learning or in the classroom. It is also great as an ongoing monthly, weekly, or early finishing assignment. It gets students to express their thoughts visually fast and without fear of doing it wrong.

It points out the difference between drawing, doodling, and sketching and stresses the many benefits of doodling. Students choose one question to answer combining doodle, sketching, and writing. It is great for showing new students that you don’t need to be able to draw realistically in order to express ideas, thoughts, and feelings visually. It has lots of examples and ideas for inspiration to help new students dive in quickly with plenty of examples of different visual elements and techniques used in mind mapping. It is a great way to get to know your students and for the class to learn about each other.

This Doodle Icebreaker activity art lesson contains:

• A Google Slides presentation outlining the assignment that you can present in class or share with students digitally.
• A PDF describing the benefits of doodling and sketching.
• A PDF explaining the difference between drawing, doodling, and sketching.
• A PDF illustrating how doodling, sketching, and writing can be used in combination to map ideas and thoughts.
• A PDF that describes the details of the assignment. There are 6 questions for students to choose from that encourage them to share something about themselves.
• Four handouts that include samples of each of the elements of mind mapping are described in the example.

This lesson helps students see the value in both drawing intuitively and realistically and the difference between the two. It sets them up for Visual Journaling and observational drawing.

Need an Easy to Follow Art Sub Plan?

The included worksheets work great as sub plans, and early finisher assignments, for students on home instruction or in ISS. They are easy to follow with the linked videos and for substitute teachers or self-directed learning when the art teacher is unavailable.

All of my lessons can be shared with your students through Google Classroom or any digital platform and are formatted to work for distance learning or in the classroom. They are designed to save you time and help your students access the tutorials, presentations, videos, or worksheets as easily as possible. You can find more ready-to-go, easy-to-follow, time-saving art lessons in my RESOURCE SHOP.

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