Introduction

1. The reading of comics to
promote values and
generate critical thinking
with elementary students
Designed by Melany
Cifuents, Maria
Corena, Sara Jiménez,
Juan Mena & Laura
OCampo
Introduction

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In Colombia, the reading practices should have a fundamental role in education to
contribute in the development of active citizens who can be part of their society and
culture, this is clearly evident in The General Law of Education article 5° (1994) and
Colombian Constitution article 67 (1991) that established the promotion of a total
education which includes the settled of ethical, moral and value aspects, focused on the
development of the critical, reflective and analytic capacity oriented to the cultural
improvement and to participate in the search of alternative solutions and to the social
and economic progress of the country.
It is well known that reading is a process that enables people to acquire new knowledge,
motivating them to think from different perspectives and ideas based on what it has been
reading; it also stimulates the imagination and creativity because it encourages people to
make real images and create new scenarios on their minds and helps to improve the
concentration in order to get enroll in reading. One of the objectives in The General Law of
Education (1994) mentions that the school should point to develop the communicative abilities
to read, comprehend and express in their mother tongue as well as in a foreign language; it
also mentioned the importance of the promotion of the reading as a hobby.

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Regarding to the words above, it is a fact that Colombia is a multilingual country
and Spanish is the native language; the teaching and learning of English as a
second language is taking more and more participation in Colombia, that is
because of the current context in which globalization takes more relevance and
the expansion of the Colombian economic comes with long steps; on the other
hand, the learning of English as second language is also essential for academic
purposes, where most of the science papers are found and written in this
language, thus, the academic community is in need of reading, understanding,
interpreting and producing knowledge based on science papers. Besides, the
requirement of an educational community for speaking or dominating a second
language is driven with the purpose to fulfill the demand of the labor market, the
technological, scientific and cultural aspects in order to respond to the necessities
presented in the society.

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In contrast, English as a second language attempt to encourage learners to
increase their experiences and exceed the challenge of the competitive world, for
this, is taken into account the necessities of the students and connecting them
with specific purposes such as the comprehension, interpretation and interaction
with a foreign language. Furthermore, the Basic Learning Rights of English (2016)
recognize four objectives for 4th graders in an elementary school, which seek that
the student is capable of: a) to comprehend the general idea in a short and simple
informative text about knowing and interesting topics, b) to question and answer in
oral or writing form after reading or listing a short and simple text as long as the
topics is knowing for them, c) to exchange simple opinions on a topic of interest
through simple and well-known sentences d) to compare basic characteristic of
people, objects and places in their school and community through simple
sentences.

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As it is mentioned in the PEI, one of the objectives of the public institution in which this
research is carried out, is that they are oriented by moral principles, ethics and a great
commitment to teaching universal values that engaged all the members of the learning
community. Likewise, the institution is committed to the development and the diversity of
universal thinking, acting autonomously in order to carry out the fulfillment of its mission,
objectives and policies; also, the institution seeks to strengthen harmonious and peaceful
coexistence between all the members of the community, taking into account the practice of
respect, humans rights and the experience of the values that each student must follow,
such as: be honest, solidary, democratic, sincere, fair and be open to good coexistence in
order to reduce or treat possible conflicts that can be faced every day. In the same way, the
student should be interested in a critical learning taking into account their capacities and
the opportunities that the institution bring to them. Also, the teachers have the
responsibility to promote and develop students humans values through the construction of
innovating minds overcoming his or her mistakes, as the person who was trained to guide
and accompany each student in their learning process.

6. Problem
The strengthening
of values in the
classroom through
the reading of
comics:
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Statement
According to the aforementioned,
values are built in different scenarios,
it is important that the classroom
becomes an scenario where students
feel comfortable to express the values,
and generate peaceful coexistence
among students and teachers; also,
values give elements to enrich every
student from a personal perspective
and in this way they might perform
effectively in the classroom and do
their best to maintain a healthy
environment on it. For this reason, this
research seeks to strengthen them by
the reading of comics, and generating
critical thinking in students and thus,
analyses how they respond to this
situation in specific.

7. Research
How can the reading of comic in the English classroom
promote values and generate critical thinking?
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👆

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It is important to clarify the definition of the comics; McCloud (1993, p. 16) state that is a
‘’juxtaposed* pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information
and/or to produce an esthetic response in the viewer” (look at the Image 1 which is an example
to the previous definition). So, the comic is a narrative literary genre made with attractive
illustrations accompanied by dialogues to share information and generate stimulus in the
readers. Through the comic, teachers can address social and cultural issues that reflect ethical,
moral and human values in the classroom. Also, the comics has some benefits inside the
classroom that allow students to gain more cognitive development at the moment of learning a
foreign language; Ortiz (2009) exposes some benefits that the comic has which are: a) to
transmit language and culture. b) to improve reading comprehension and vocabulary
enrichment. c) to facilitate concentration. d) to facilitate the language learning process. e) to
awake in students a critical attitude towards their social environment.

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The literature review suggests that several studies about the reading of comics have been
conducted, but just a few of them approach the reading of comics as a tool to promote values
and generate critical thinking in children. Delgadillo (2016) in his research paper aims to
promote students critical reading process by the use of comics as a didactic resource;
considering the comic as a multimodal text in which the image and writing interact, to help the
students make inferences based on the implicit elements, founding that through the constant
reading of various comics students can acquire experiences in the inferential and critical
analysis of this type of texts.
As a result of the comics showing social, political or cultural issues, students will have a greater
motivation and interest to express their ideas and opinions that will come as these kind of
stories are worked on. In this way, students will be able to go from a literal level where they only
analyze the explicit elements of history, at a level where they will develop a critical and
inferential thinking that will allow them to throw solid arguments that sustain and defend the
hypotheses that can be create in front of a text (Delgadillo, 2016).

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Furthermore, comics can help to develop critical thinking, since it promotes the analysis of the
different messages from the comic which are oriented to understand and have interaction with
the meaning, and what it generates on students learning process; young people are constantly
trying to understand their reality and this leads to develop a critical attitude, allowing them to
create arguments with which they defend and justify in a certain way their positions as well as
their ideals accompanied with valid arguments that sustain their thoughts. In order to support
this idea, Lai (2011) indicates:
Critical thinking is believed to include the component skills of analyzing
arguments, making inferences by using inductive or deductive reasoning, judging
or evaluating, and making decisions or solving problems. Critical thinking entails
cognitive skills, or abilities, and dispositions. These dispositions, which can be
seen as attitudes, or habits of mind, include open- and fair-mindedness,
inquisitiveness, flexibility, a propensity to seek reason, a desire to be well-
informed, and a respect for and willingness to entertain diverse viewpoints (p. 41-
42).

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In addition, as Griño (2015) points out, the comic represents that visual world in which people
live, since its pages represent those values of real life. In certain situations this is considered a
trivial, superficial genre and that can not contribute much in educational environments. With this
research, he sought to put aside this idea and verify that through comics we can motivate our
students to read increasing reading practice in children using comics as a teaching resource. As
it is mentioned, one of the main objectives to be developed in primary education is the
promotion of reading, and therefore a series of activities are proposed based on the comic that
help us to achieve that goal and in this way, it is presented as a motivational and fun tool, which
also serves in the development of a personality and a critical thinking.
On the other hand, the school strengthens the values to incorporate them in a way in which the
child behaves individually and socially. Moreover, in the process of child development, it is
fundamental for all children to find a normative reference that allows them through a self-
criticism process, and acquire the ability to reason about his own actions. Corner (2011) points
out:

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Dedicated educators hope that by creating a curriculum that focuses on the
important value of helping others through small acts of kindness within the
classroom, to mitzvah* opportunities in the larger community, they can instill in
their students the important lesson that helping others is important and good.
Finally, the purpose of this work is to demonstrate the competence and great capacity of
comics as a pedagogical tool that can motivate children to read as it is an emotional, playful
and humorous material, it is not the only point, the reading of comics also can promote values
and generate critical thinking. The main objective of this research is to present an intervention
proposal to stimulate and encourage children to read, in this case in fourth grade of primary
school, since children acquire the reading habit at a very early age and therefore we must
encourage this habit in order to achieve that promotion of values and generation of critical
thinking through comics in the aforementioned children.

13. General objective:
× To analyses the student’s responses that the
reading of comics produce through the Promotion
of Values and generation of critical thinking with
elementary students
Specific objectives:
× To identify students responses through reading of
different material and through the experience of
situations in the context in which they develop..
× To interpret student’s responses through interactive
activities
× To describe how the reading of comics can promote
values and generate critical thinking.
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14. THANKS!
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Designed by Melany
Cifuents, Maria Corena,
Sara Jiménez, Juan Mena &
Laura OCampo