Art in Education

What is the objective?

The workshop on ‘Art in Education’ aims at using children’s interest in art to help them acquire the English language. It helps teachers discover:

• The process of making a comic strip out of a textbook story
• The process of helping children acquire language while they try to produce comic strips.

What is the process?

The process of transforming a story into a comic strip begins once the teacher has helped children to read the story. That being done, the below mentioned steps are followed:

1. Teaching to draw Stick Figures
   • Teacher draws a few variations of easy-to-draw stick figures in some basic poses like standing, walking, running, sitting etc., and students try some on their own.
   • 
   • Teacher also shows how any position can be easily converted into a stick figure if one student can model that position.
   • 
2. Whole Class Activity
   • Teacher discusses with children on how a story can be broken up into scenes and each scene into smaller events and each event into a series of dialogues which then can be converted into frames of a comic strip.
   • Teacher then interacts with the children to identify the characters, location, event and dialogues required for the first frame of the comic strip.
   • Teacher interacts further to decide what the characters’ appearance, posture and position should be. Also where and how the speech bubbles need to be drawn, what background and other props need to be drawn, and what and where the narration introducing the scene/event needs to be written.
   • Teacher draws the first frame based on the inputs from the children.
   • 
3. Group Activity
   • Teacher divides students into groups, gives each group half a chart paper and asks them to plan and draw what they think would be the second frame of the comic strip.
   • Teacher goes around and helps them plan and execute.
   • Teacher then reviews each group’s work by displaying it and interacting with the whole class.
   • 
4. Individual Activity
   • Teacher gives each student an A4 sheet of paper and asks them to plan and draw what he/she thinks would be the third frame of the comic strip.
   • Teacher goes around and helps the individuals plan and execute.
   • Teacher asks students to do a peer review of their work by discussing with their partners.
   • 
5. After Class Activity
   • Students who are interested can make a complete comic strip of the story in their free time.

How do you ensure Language Acquisition happens?

When art is being used in a language classroom, there is always a danger of it ending up as an art class and the ultimate objective of language acquisition being lost. So how can a language teacher use children’s inherent interest in art as a tool to assist the process of language acquisition? The following tips discussed in the workshop might help:

1. Teachers should ensure that discussion happens in a democratic way. That is, all views are accepted, no views are considered right or wrong. This will remove the fear factor and encourage more children to get involved.
2. Teachers should refrain from supplying ideas in a discussion as that will limit the creative expressions of children.
3. During all interactions, teachers should speak in English wherever she feels that children will be able to guess the meaning based on the context. This will help children acquire the language.
4. Teachers should avoid translating the text into Tamil because that does not help them learn English. Instead the teacher could ask probing questions to help children guess what it might mean.
5. Teachers can however translate what the children say in Tamil into English if the children ask for it after trying on their own.
6. Teachers should encourage children to re-read the text to find out details such as the next event or the relevant dialogue, instead of supplying the answers themselves.
7. Teachers should avoid correcting grammatical errors of students as research has shown that such corrections have no role to play in language acquisition.

Teacher Feedback

After the workshop, teachers felt that generating comic strips would be an interesting and easy way to improve children's English.