Effect of visuals and illustrations on learning levels of children - A story straight from the field

STORY TELLING then and now

I always (and even now) use to envy story tellers primarily because of the way they engaged the readers, viewers or listeners. So, when i got the opportunity to conduct story telling sessions with the children at NGO (where i worked as teacher volunteer), i grabbed the moment with both the hands. I was brimming with joy as it brought back vivid memories of my own childhood, when i use to look forward to story sessions. 

For most of us, story sessions were a way to break free from the routine life as a student and immerse into a life that was filled with fun and merry making. Teacher then use to read out and sometimes enact the stories to us. Unlike earlier, story telling has undergone tremendous change. For example, a good story teller makes use of not only written texts, but visuals & illustrations, drama, language styles and variations to communicate the story. 

The Big Idea 

The idea of conducting story telling sessions amongst the NGO children was aimed at these interwoven components:

(#) Instil reading habits, (#) Develop listening abilities, (#) Improve english comprehension, (#) Develop vocabulary base, and (#) Foster visual thinking. 

My instructional approach to story telling 

So,i read up articles and watched handful of videos in-order to prepare myself for this session. Based on the reading ability and vocabulary knowledge of the children, i picked up a story book from the scholastics called, " Chewy Louie by Howie Schneider". Apart from the fact that these children come from poor background and hardly have exposure to english language at their homes, the hindi medium of instruction at the school further provides them with limited english speaking exposure. This happens to be a prime cause of their poor english understandability level. After assessing the level of children, i decided to conduct the class in english with hindi translation. 

I started the class in English and asked children to explain the story so far. Many children struggled to explain even the basic sentences such as these:

He ate everything we put in his bowl. Then he ate the bowl.

My mother was very worried. "He'll get sick,"she said. "He won't get sick," my father said. "He's just a puppy. 

This prompted me to switch to Hindi and children began relating to the plot, characters, and sequence of events. But children looked far from an enthusiastic bunch. The participation was passive, while i wanted the children to become active participants. I wondered as to what was wrong and why children were looking less enthusiastic about being in this class. I started flipping through the book pages to find the answer and i saw the beautiful illustrations.

I began showing the illustrations to the children one by one and to my amusement, children rattled out the entire story as it was written in the book. That day, i witnessed the power of visual teaching and learning. 

So, i decided to embark upon a small research to validate the power of visual teaching and instructions upon the learning levels of children. 

Visual learning and teaching impact on children (especially beginner-intermediate readers)

In the next article, that is Part II of this post, I would share some perspectives on visual literacy and its effect on learning levels of children. 

Khushboo