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Du iz tak

Investigating the ways we come to know through picture books

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Gender And Sexuality Education Philosophy with Children Reflections on Pedagogy

RHEA KUTHOORE

Sept 05, 2023 · 6 min read

Goal

An exploration of how we make meaning of a foreign language. How can we make meaning of written text, visually? How can we interpret meaning from context (i.e based on what is taking place in the story)? Can we derive one meaning of the written text or are there several reasonable possibilities?

‘Du Iz Tak?’ Is a picture book that depicts the blooming of a flower and its withering away. More closely, it is a conversation between species who are building structures on the flower as it is blooming. The reasons for using this book are — 1. The children have a chance to experience meaning-making as a playful game and 2. It gives young people, who are otherwise learning languages from the adults around them, a chance to create and interpret by themselves.

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Pre-stimulus

1. Which languages do you speak? How did you learn to speak these languages? Who did you learn these languages from?
2. If we have to crack a new language, where we can see symbols for the words, but we cannot hear the sounds, how can we do it?

Stimulus

The children will be given a copy of ‘Du Iz Tak?’ and asked to interpret what is being said in the story by cracking the language.

The following three clues will be given to them to crack this new language:
1. Look for how and when words repeat themselves
Thinking skill: compare and contrast
2. Look for how punctuations are used
3. Look at the expressions and emotions on the pages

Goals of this Activity

1. To use the process of trial and error to decipher the meanings of repetitive words in different contexts
2. Making meaning of written text, visually
3. Share interpretations with one another and see how there are multiple ways of reading language

When flipping through the pages, we made the following key observations to make meaning of the text visually:

1. We paid attention to the waning of the moon to guess how much time may have passed from one page to another
2. On the page with ‘ta ta’, we noticed how the insect is waving its hand, and thereby thought that he must be saying ‘bye bye’
3. Other interpretations included: ‘give me water/food’ and ‘bachao (save me)’ On the page after the flower bloomed, one child said, “there must be so many more insects now because the flower has bloomed”
4. On the left most side of the page and on top of the bark, we noticed how the stick insect reveals itself on a later page.

For the interpretation of ‘Du Iz Tak?’ On page 1, the children shared the following interpretations —
Thinking skill: entertaining different perspectives
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1. What is this?
2. Who does this belong to?
3. Put this, it will grow?
4. Will this survive?
5. When will this grow?
6. Are you seeing this?

When we spoke of the overall interpretation, most children thought that the story involved a bunch of insects building themselves homes on the plant. However, I wondered whether it could be possible that the insects were concerned about the effect of the winds and changing climate on the plant? Hence, they thought to build structures that would increase the weight of the plant to hold it down when the winds approach.
Thinking skill: proposing an alternate hypothesis

In class learnings

1. As the words repeat themselves at different points in the story, we worked, through trial and error, to figure out the most reasonable meanings for some of the words.

2. We began to think about the words that are spelt the same way but have different meanings. For instance, fair (synonym just) and fair (synonym light skinned). We also began speaking of metaphors.

Further questions/suggestions

Facilitators can share with the group the ways in which old and new languages have evolved visually, and the ways in which we are always creating new meanings of words by using them in newer contexts.

RHEA KUTHOORE is an educator who is passionate about facilitating philosophical and feminist thinking amongst young people.

Thinking Rhizomatically

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