A Window Into Your Child's Mind

Children’s drawings are under-utilised when it comes to lesson planning. A good lesson plan is one that connects with children’s interests and needs — and a drawing can be used to understand a child better. After all, a drawing is a window into a child’s mind and provides insights to a child’s prior knowledge and experiences, his conceptions and misconceptions of people, things and events.

When applying the framework to interpret children’s drawings, it is important to take into account the child’s verbal descriptions to understand the reasoning behind the drawing before applying the descriptive indicators.

Example 1: “Wild animals” drawing by a six-year-old boy
 

Child’s verbal descriptions:

1. “The hippo swimming around; people sit on the hippo.”
2. “The lion wants to chase the tiger.”
3. “The lion wants to chase this lion becos this lion loves this lion becos is cute.”
4. “Bat wants to eat leaf scare to cross to the tree becos later eagle eat up the bat; so he fly fly.”
5. “Eagle got plaster; the bee sting; got bee hive.”
6. “Squirrel crawl up the tree; they eat nuts.”

• Remember – by identifying and labelling nine animals
  
  
• Understand – by classifying land animals, with the tiger, lion and hippo placed on a baseline. He also gave examples to clarify and represent how animals function or associate with something else (such as the tree and nuts) e.g. “Orang-utan climb tree; squirrel climb tree to eat nuts.” Flying animals were categorised on the upper plane at almost same level with the rainbow and sun.
  
  
• Analyse – by organising animals in in groups relevant to the thematic idea of “wild animals”, which shows that he understands predator-prey relationships. He also differentiated a bat from an eagle; a tiger from a lion; an orang-utan from a squirrel to tell a pictorial story of wild animals, and also made inferences by comparing, explaining, predicting, concluding the causal-effect of the lion, bat and eagle behaviours.
  
  
• Evaluate – by choosing carefully what animals represent “wild” (as compared to “farm”). The child’s creative invention of a new hybrid of snakes was proudly identified as “tiger-snake; rhino-snake-tiger” a synthesis of two to three unique features distinctive of the snake (a fork-tongue); tiger (orange stripes) and rhino (two grey horns).

• “Plaster on the eagle’s body” – relate this to veterinary practices/injured animals.
  
  
• The child’s new hybrid creations can lead to a session of making models of other hybrid animals.
  
  
• A possible class discussion on how animals love or care for each other (inspired by the child’s idea of cute lions that love and chase each other).