I’ve been running courses in graphic facilitatiion for English language teaching professionals for a while now. The courses teach simple ways to use drawings to make lessons more understandable, engaging and memorable.

My drawings are not art, they are communication! They are simply a visual vocabulary that I have taught myself and developed over time. Everyone can do it.

The beauty is that they are easy to draw and they take just seconds to clearly communicate a point. They are simple icons which are unintimidating and accessible for all.

I often find that my students copy them, unprompted to their notebooks, which instantly supports their learning and language recall.

In this video I demonstrate how to draw some useful icons for the ELT classroom. You can use these icons for your whiteboards, resources, sketchnotes and graphic organisers. You could also show your learners how to use them in their notebooks. I particularly like to add them to rubrics in homework tasks to ensure my beginners understand what to do.

How would you use them?