A project born from the meeting with Francesca La Mantia (teacher and director) and Giuseppe Musmarra (actor and performer). Three young professionals and dreamers who, putting together their love for teaching, drawing and acting, have given life to a didactic laboratory and a new learning method aimed with particular attention to DSA (Specific Learning Disorders) but who involved all the boys.
A method that allows young people to approach the study of Italian literature in an innovative and creative way.
DisegnalLibri a word game. A game to learn
It is a perfect syncretism between literature, drawing and acting. It is a project that enhances the differences and stimulates comparison and creativity among children, making the knowledge of the classics foreseen by the ministerial programs accessible to all.
With the word "everyone" we mainly refer to those children with specific learning disabilities (SLD) who, through this new method, have the possibility of accessing these texts in an easier way.
The target
To approach, remember and enjoy texts in a different way.
To increase the curiosity towards topics that often do not have a high appeal.
To highlight imagination, creativity and critical spirit.
To let students explore those abilities that, sometimes, would not have the chance to arouse, otherwise.
Translate in drawing the novels of Italian and foreign literature in order to better memorize the lyrics and curious guys to knowledge and to 'deepening of the same.
Reading and Listening . The text is interpreted and read aloud by a professional actor and repeated a total of three times:
- 1st reading: the children listen.
- 2nd reading: the children listen and start drawing.
- 3rd reading: optional. The children can ask that the text be reread to them or to take some passages back.
At the end of each workshop there is then a moment of sharing , in which the students comment on their work.
The method and the development
The actor, for reading and interpretation.
The illustrator, for a practical tuition and support
The teacher, for doubts and clarifications
The learning method in question starts from an experimental phase implemented during the academic year. 2014-15: with a group of students from the Fermi High School of Milan (SLD + non-SLD) we created laboratories with the aim of understanding the effectiveness and feasibility of this method.
Duration: 6 months, 2 of two hours each meeting per month.
More than a laboratory
DisegnaLibri was much more than a simple laboratory. For six months we saw students hungry for knowledge, who ran to the laboratory after school curious to know what would happen to the characters in the story. It was amazing to see how each person approached the text, which passages or characters caught their attention, and how these took shape through the drawing.
In addition to experimenting with the method, our biggest challenge, and also fear, was being able to win the attention and interest of children between 16 and 20 years old. Children who had to freely choose whether to participate in the workshop, since there was no obligation to attend. Kids who had to listen to Zeno's stories rather than switch off after school. Here, seeing them totally immersed in history, to the point of never touching the smartphone until the end of the class, this was perhaps the greatest achievement.
The fears of the boys resounded mainly in these two sentences: " but I don't know how to draw " and " I don't like reading ". When the students realized that it was not a question of having artistic skills or book-eaters, in a short time, each of them found the key: some drew the characters faithfully reproducing the narrated details, others added elements of fantasy, others still they expressed in a more iconic language. The most interesting aspect was seeing how the blank sheets were filled with new stories, all united by the same plot, but all enriched by the imagination and singularity of the students.