A Creative Lesson for Sing to the Dawn

This lesson was an extension of the previous lesson whereby my 1NA students focused on identifying social ills in the City in Chapter 4 of Sing to the Dawn. Students were tasked to create a comic using the website: http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix.

Students agreed that it would be logical to expect a conversation between Dawan and her mother as they are walking back home from Noi’s house (when asked, students articulated promptly: “It was three long kilometres!”) even though Kwai comes into the picture after a while. This activity fits in with the dramatization task whereby students are also encouraged to incorporate ‘missing scenes’. Students are to: (1) include at least two negative aspects of the City; (2) demonstrate the likely reactions of Dawan and her mother based on what they have read from Chapters 1 to 4; and (3) help Dawan support her decision to go to the City based on evidence from these chapters. To facilitate students' understanding of the task requirements, there was a modelling process prior to the activity. Having created a script (assigned as a take-home activity in the previous lesson), they were brought to the computer laboratory where they focused on creating the comic.

The website was chosen as there are quite a few characters students could choose to portray Dawan and her mother; each character is presented in four varying appearances along with different gestures; the students had to explain their choices e.g. how they accentuate the characterization (or particular attributes) of Dawan and her mother.  It was quite successful; the students generally have short attention span but all of them demonstrated great engagement with the task for the entire period; some even demonstrated great characterization in their comic. The students gave very positive feedback after the lesson and requested to have more of such activities in future.