MATHEMATICAL CARTOONING FOR PRIMARY GRADES

DR. LALIT KISHORE

Focus on visual-smart kids

Visual learners are special learners They have an uncanny ability to access and

hold images in their minds. Our job as math teachers is to help them to

creatively use that strength to learn basic arithmetic

Visual learners should be allowed to continue loving to learn.

Enlivening math classroom

Without the use of cartoons by primary school level math teachers, learning of the subject becomes a lost cause for visual learners.

Learning of math becomes enlivened, vibrant, engaging, educational, and joyful by using cartoons in grade one

Importance of a visual

For visual learners, a picture is worth more than a thousand words,

When math is initially represented in pictorial or cartoon formats, it becomes incredibly useful to visual learners.

Pedagogical or math-related cartooning The simple essential skill of drawing

number, symbols and shape cartoons is to be learnt by primary teachers.

The teachers can create a bit of amusement by drawing simple subject related cartoons to create some amusement in the classroom.

Emphasis on simplification

Skills of over simplification and caricature are used to capture the essence of an idea.

Number naming and counting are introduced unconsciously by many teachers with cartoons

For example, think about the first few numbers depicted by the tally system: I, II, III, IIII …

Those are… drawings! Cartoons! Caricatures of an idea!

But the lack liveliness. Small children see everything as if living, that’s why the self-talk with objects.

Cartooning skill…for teachers

The skill of making a drawing of something or someone in a simplified or exaggerated way.

For example showing a face like a circle, square, pear-shaped or triangle with dots as eyes and a pointed line as nose, a long dash of curve as mouth is cartooning through simplification

Exaggerations are avoided in pedagogic cartooning.

Pedagogic cartoon

A  pedagogic cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated semi-realistic (representing reality but not real) visual art intended for educating students on a topic through over-simplification  of visuals in which caricaturing is generally avoided]

Professional and pedagogic cartoons

Boy and girl as math cartoons

Maths shapes cartoons

Female and male math teachers as cartoons

Number cartoons

Math symbols cartoons

Activities

Drawing and colouring math cartoons for enhancing visual intelligence

Use of math cartoon with dialogue boxes to convey facts and concepts

Using them to for creating humour Using them to create pedagogical comic math

stories strips