Improving Reading Comprehension through Ilustrative Interpretation about a Story

To help build my student's literacy skills and to ensure they have fun in class (as I always try to), I decided to teach an English lesson slightly different. Instead of limiting the exercise of reading to study the English language and improve reading skills by only reading, I decided that I wanted to make the exercise interactive, hands-on, collaborative, and discussion-based. Note: I always create my lessons in a fashion where they are collaborative, discussion-based and interactive, but this time - I wanted my students to create using artistic materials.

After we read an article together as a group and then as individuals, I placed my students into 6 groups of 5, with one group having a couple more students than the other teams.

I gave each group a section of the article, instructed them to read their given section and choose as a group a scene, an idea, a thought, or even an object in the text and either draw, paint, or craft it.

Each group was given watercolors and acrylic paint, pencils, markers, color pencils, and play-doh to use in their illustration, based on their collaborated interpretation of their group's section in the story.

After explaining how to use the paint, clean the brushes, blend colors, and reminded them that everyone on their team must participate, my students were excited and thrilled to begin! They talked about the story, referred to the text for evidence, sketched scenes, provided supportive comments to the leader of the group or the person that seemed to provide direction to all members... it was a fun way to help my students comprehend the main point in each section of the story, and to imagine what it might look like through visuals created by them.

I then had each team choose a teammate to talk about the scene they choose in the story, what kind of illustration they created, and what their drawing/painting or craft was meant to depict. When each group member finished their presentation, all other students in class cheered them on for the creative work they contributed, and how great the artwork actually looked.

What I loved the most about this exercise was that not only were my students reading and discussing the story, through the creation of an art - collaboratively - I believe, each student gained a sense of ownership, confidence, deeper understanding of each other, and practiced how to work together to accomplish a goal based on reading.

All photos were approved to be taken by the students and school. Photos were taken in the month of May 2023 by (Mmapula) Norbaya Jameela Durr.