The impact of drawings on writing.
What is the impact of students’ drawings on the imaginative process of writing a narrative?
General topic of interest
The acquisition of formal writing is a milestone for grade 2. Therefore, as teachers for 7 to 8-year-old students, we decided to research and study more about the path and which tools we can offer to improve students’ writing skills.
Participants
Students will provide data for our research.
Data collecting approach
We will separate the class into 2 homogeneous groups with regards to the writing hypothesis, so each group will have fluent students and students that are still learning writing. The students will be asked to write about the same theme: “a day in my online learning life”. Group A will not plan before writing. Group B will plan the narrative through drawings. The goal is to analyse how and if the drawing influences the textual production.
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Student's drawing for narrative planning
Data collecting example
1- Count of the quantity of words written in the text;
2- Count of the quantity of adjectives describing the setting;
3- Count of the quantity of adjectives describing the characters;
4- Count of the quantity of verbs;
Emerging results
The data had been organized according to quantity of words written in the text; quantity of adjectives describing the setting; quantity of adjectives describing the characters and quantity of verbs.
The results are in this table.
Graph with the data collected related to the number of words
Reflections
30 essays were analysed under the same theme: comedy personal narrative. 15 students hadn’t planned their writing through drawings and 15 students had used the resource to plan. We noticed that the students who hadn’t used drawings as a tool didn’t use adjectives to describe the setting of the narrative, which makes us think that the graphic resource leads students to think more of the details of the story. The use of adjectives to describe the characters was also not so evident in the narratives whose authors hadn’t used the drawings before writing. The quantity of words and verbs used had no relevant difference between groups A and B. Therefore, we conclude, through the results of this research, that planning a narrative through drawings makes a difference when it comes to the use of adjectives, or else, the abundance of details in the text. On the other hand, the children didn’t show as much creativity in the writing process by not using drawings as a planning tool.
Next steps
The next step of this research is to compare the writing of the same student: a narrative planned through drawings and another text without planning. This way, we will be able to analyse better what impact graphic resources have on each child.
Another goal is to broaden data collection by doing research with grade 1 - 3 students. We intend to analyse other information and compare how the planning of the narrative through drawings influences the children in different steps in the process of reading and writing acquisition.
