Y8 English Lit - is it appropriate to ask pupils to draw characters/scenes for homework?

I loathe this. It's not a hw I'd ever set (for History) but I've seen plenty who do set 'draw a storyboard' as work. Also hate doing posters. As others have said, fine if you are good at Art and don't like writing. But it's not going to help you when you have to write essays at GCSE. And it's bloody difficult to mark - are you commenting on the fab art skills or the English knowledge?

Perhaps you could bring up the proiblems first without raising the issue of dyslexia. She's not preparing them adequately for their exams if she's not pushing them to write regular essays by yr8. I'd be squirming with irritation by now.
Offend her. Why not? As Philip Pullman said, no one has the right to go through life without being offended. If her disability is being used as an excuse for her inadequate teaching, then she needs to face up to this problem and offer solutions not excuses.

Nothing wrong with giving the choice sometimes, although I think you'd need to be clear that this option will eventually run out, as it were, because you won't be allowed to draw a picture in your exam. So yes, for a basic character description I guess you could draw Curley's wife and label her fancy hair and her painted nails and all that, as an alternative to listing her physical attributes in words.

However, only a really talented artistic kid would be able to show in a drawing that she is frustrated, naive, been dealt a crap hand in life, craves attention but doesn't know why or what to do with it.... So I think you do need words to go beyond a certain level, and by extension I think that if you limit the task to 'draw a picture', as the OP describes, then you actually are stopping the pupils from getting beyond a basic level.

The point about literary critics was an exaggerated way of saying I don't think anyone who really had something to say about a text would choose to do it through the medium of art unless they actually were an artist. All those per-raphaelite Ophelias and stuff: brilliant, but not very realistic as an expectation of 12 year olds!

Sounds fine to me, it shows whether the text has been understood and how well.

And for all you, 'I'm academic but can't draw' lot, there are also students who are artistic / visual and who would struggle with the written task.

Changing the tasks so some are written others drawn and other assessment methods is inclusive teaching.

No one's actually said: Oh the homework the OP describes sounds great! What on earth are you worrying about?!

It really doesn't sound very satisfactory (mind you, I share Dominodonkey's scepticism about the dyslexic, non-marking English teacher tbh).

Some of us have pointed out that note-taking/planning/collating of evidence from a text can sometimes be done in a format other than writing on its own, & a drawing to show awareness of key points in a description is one possibility here.

I'd always give options in any task like that - 'you can draw & label the character OR you can just bullet point the key quotations OR you can do a power point collage of images to go with the key quotes OR you can video yourself reading out the key quotes you've chosen & explaining why', so being crap at art would never be an issue.

However, for a student who loved drawing but wasn't so sure about English, it can be a great way of getting them to respond confidently - as would the video for a student who likes to discuss their ideas rather than write them down.

"The day Sally Shuttleworth discusses a literary text by drawing a picture of it, I'll agree this is a valid homework."

Sorry, were you a professor at 13 then? If not I fail to see how this point has any relevance whatsoever.

"I've just asked dd for clarity on this and she said: "Mrs X said she doesn't like marking essays as she's dyslexic so that's why we have to do pictures".

Sorry but I don't believe you (or rather I don't believe your daughter) If she did say this it was probably sarcastic. Some of the kids were probably whining and rather than explaining why it is a useful home work she probably took this approach. Children learn in all different ways and 1 or 2 home works a year where you draw and label characters from a set text is absolutely fine. (I wouldn't suggest it is done more than this) It is still a good use of time at GCSE to encourage students to find and understand relevant quotes, especially in complex texts.

I'm still fuming about having to do this in my final year of secondary with the excuse being 'English is compulsory so it's important to give those who aren't good at writing a chance to do well.'

Fuck off. No one was giving those of us who were rubbish at drawing a chance to write essays in art instead painting or drawing, were they? Just so frustrating for those who aren't good at art, find it stressful and could reasonably be expected to have been excused it in bloody English Lit.

This rant brought to you by late nights tracing and artfully shading pictures of WWI battlefields then staining the paper with tea to 'age' it. For assessment. At the age of 16.

The day Sally Shuttleworth discusses a literary text by drawing a picture of it, I'll agree this is a valid homework. But this sounds rubbish, I'm afraid. As a child very interested in books and writing, I hated being judged on how artistically and neatly and prettily I could make my reading look, and in normal circumstances I don't think it's of any use for any child.

It does sound very lazy to me, for a top set of yr 8 and more than once per academic year.

Ds in yr 7 of a non-selective (but set) independent has had 1 of these types of homework for English, plus one cartoon strip thing for each of science and history. No posters and no blooming PowerPoints like a lot of primary homeworks. I think the rest of his homeworkp have been really appropriate and useful.

I probably would make an enquiry of the HOD if you have any other concerns about how English is being delivered.

Yes TOSN, expecting a child to demonstrate understanding entirely via the medium of skilful artistic expression would be a rubbish homework for lots of them - although not all, to be fair.

(I had a student some years ago who struggled enormously with basic literacy. I'm still using scans of his Macbeth character drawings in some of my interactive whiteboard resources - they are outstanding. Very Ralph Steadman.)

But you don't have to be able to draw well in order to produce a visual representation of Curley's Wife, say, & explain how her appearance is described in cinematic detail in order to imply stuff about her character & to foreshadow her fate. You could do it perfectly well with a labelled silhouette or a collage of images from magazines.

I'm not saying there isn't a problem with OP's dd's homework - I think there almost certainly is. & if students are constantly producing art in 'English, French & Science' as an end in itself, then that is indeed lazy. But it can very definitely be used as one type of task amongst many in effective learning.

Trash. Analyse texts instead

No, sorry, this is a crap homework, whatever you say, reallytired. And in my good comp we spell truly without an "e". Drawing is for Art or for very weak pupils who might struggle to express themselves. Pupils should not be having homework set to suit the (dyslexic) special needs of the teacher, but their own needs.

It's not 'these days': I had to do this in 1989!

A talented artist could demonstrate understanding of a text via a drawing: a child who has no flair for art could not. It's not a good homework, and I say that as someone who always usually defends the teacher on here.

"Meanwhile, parents expect the classroom walls and corridors of the school adorned with display work produced by students."

I don't! I don't think clutter is at all conducive to a calm & productive learning environment but I've discovered I'm a minority on that one.

DD gets this sort of homework all the bloody time - English, French & science (ffs) are the worst offenders - she hates it. Student complaints that that the lesson is English not art have so far fallen on deaf ears. Her latest science homework is to draw a cartoon strip of the process of human reproduction. The learning objective for that one are pretty good - must include clearly labelled diagrams of cells & structures involved etc - but why a cartoon? Why not just say ''describe the processes involved in human reproduction with diagrams"?

And the number of bloody posters they've had to produce - how about spending some time encouraging them to produce a coherent paragraph in legible handwriting instead?

Meanwhile, parents expect the classroom walls and corridors of the school adorned with display work produced by students.

Look, it really all does depend on the context.

If the situation is really that this teacher is consistently setting pointless drawing HWs because she isn't actually able to mark extended written responses, then the HW situation is the least of the OP's problems with her dd's English teaching, tbh.

But Eng Lit these days is about detailed analysis, not, as it was when I did O Level, a test of whether you can remember what happens in the book & rote-reproduce a few quotes to prove it.

There are excellent reasons for using character diagrams, storyboarding, mindmapping, retrieval grids etc as part of the process.

eg. a couple of years ago my year 10s were busily drawing & labelling the set of 'Death of a Salesman' based on the stage directions, as prep for an essay on 'Willy's house is an extended metaphor for the dissolution of his personality throughout the course of the text.'

It might be 'dumbing down' if a year 8 is being asked to do drawing tasks for English HW. But it genuinely might not.

Why are schools doing this these days? I hate to say such a hackneyed phrase but it smacks of dumbing down..,,,,,

I would be annoyed too. Bad enough when homework for most sunjecvts in the first half term of year 7 was draw a poster.....
Terrible for those that cannot draw well.

DD2 (yr5) has just been given a drawing task related to the first page of their latest text. Just about appropriate for that age group.

Again - storyboarding to show understanding of the structure of the text is something I do sometimes. & stick figures are fine. (I can't draw either!)

DS hates drawing homeworks - luckily doesn't get them often, but has the occasional 'draw a cartoon strip' to illustrate something. He really, really can't draw, so does stick figures. It sounds a bit pointless for year 8 English.

Shit and lazy. I hate this. I see it all the time at the school where I work. Cutting and sticking, drawing, colouring in. Kids waste so much time on art work outside of actual art lessons - It's bloody secondary school, FGS!!! Resllytired: you can show all the things you listed without wasting an hour trying to draw an accurate picure by bullet point descriptions of characters and their appearance or characteristics or asking pupils questions such as "how does the author let us know that blah blah blah" for inference without having to draw bloody expressions onto faces.

I was top set at school and on the very rare occasion that we were asked to draw pictures outside of art lessons I used to inwardly sigh. For a clever pupil who is lacking in natural artistic ability it really takes away from the point of an English lit or history lesson. It would take me 2 hours of huffing and puffing to get the expression or clothes of a character right whereas I could have done a list of bullet points to demonstrate to the teacher that I understood the topic.

Lazy teaching, IMO. Leave the art to the art lessons, please, particularly top sets. In depth or succinct written description is a skill which needs practising, NOT colouring in!

No, it's not good, especially for a child who isn't strong on drawing! We used to get English homeworks like this all the time when I was 11/12 and I hated them.