EDC1008 Learning Through Literacy | Critical Reflection

A picture consists of illustrations meant to educate children on a particular subject. The diagrams appear on each page or on one side of the facing pages accompanied by a few words. Researchers explain that the books inspire creative thinking; improve the child’s vocabulary; and enhance their visual skills. This paper reflects on the process of creating a picture book.

Reporting and Responding

I found out that the process involves a number of steps. The first step involves planning the picture book. At this stage, I reviewed some picture books to gain inspiration. A book’s success depends on its idea (Sun, C. 2016, 100). At the second stage, I wrote the story and planned the book’s layout. Additionally, I created the characters and a rough draft of the story. At the third step, I added pictures to the storyboard. For the last stage, I assembled the block by bidding the pages and creating a cover.

One of my observations is that the process does not involve the creation of a digital version. Today, students are increasingly using the digital platforms such as the internet for learning. I also observed that the process does not have a provision for peer review. Notably, peer review allows other individuals to preview the work before publication (Horsman, Y. 2014, 330). Personally, I think that process is erroneous in that it omits these crucial steps.

Relating

I found out that the process of creating a picture book is vital for teaching and learning. The illustrations allow an instructor to summarize, synthesize, make connections and activate the learner's prior knowledge. Psychologists suggest that the importance of early education is to model and guide the student's initiative in learning. Personally, I think that the process improves my experience in teaching and expands my knowledge base. Another benefit is that the process expands my inferences about the use and meaning of new words. However, I think that the psychological development of the child is low.

Reasoning

During the process of creating a picture book, I learned that the underlying concept in creating a picture book is to “simplify” the learning process. Scientists suggest that it is difficult for children to soak up knowledge and retain it for long due to their limited brain capacity (Lin, R. 2012, 41). The context is important in that I must employ an interesting idea or simplified illustrations. Additionally, my choice of vocabulary must be simple for the student to comprehend. Teaching using picture books requires little prior knowledge.

Reconstructing

From my experience, the conventional process of creating picture books is wrong. Although I agree with the majority of the ideas, there are a number of steps I argue against. For instance, in the first stage reading other picture books is unnecessary. Before publishing any book, an author must expand their knowledge to become more critical, reflective and inquisitive (Hsiao, C. 2016, 39). In most cases, professional authors consult other scholars on an idea, rather than read picture books I could have skipped the first stage (Lin, R. 2012, 42).

In the future, I would create a balance between the number of illustrations and the corresponding words. One idea that might work is reorganizing the pictures well – this will make the book more interesting. Additionally, it captures the reader’s attention (Horsman, Y. 2014, 324).

References

Horsman, Y. 2014. The infancy of art: comics, childhood and picture books. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 5(3), 323-335. Available from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21504857.2014.914962 [Accessed 16 September 2018]

Hsiao, C. 2016. Exploring the effectiveness of picture books for teaching young children the concepts of environmental protection. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 25(1), 36-49. Available from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10382046.2015.1106203?data-src=recsys [Accessed 16 September 2018]

Lin, R. 2012. A Study of Creative Thinking for Children's Picture Book Creation. ELSEVIER, pp. 36-42. Available from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275195515_A_Study_of_Creative_Thinking_for_Children%27s_Picture_Book_Creation?origin=publication_list [Accessed 16 September 2018]

Sun, C. 2016. The value of picture-book reading-based collaborative output activities for vocabulary retention. Language Teaching Research, 21(1), pp. 96 - 117. Available from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1362168816655364 [Accessed 16 September 2018].