The creation of a picture book as a bilingual education proposal in Secondary Education

This article analyzes a proposal for the reception and creation of a picture book with a bilingual group of 1st-year secondary students (1º de ESO), following a CLIL approach and the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (Bill and Kalantzis, 2009). The aim was to examine students’ engagement in knowledge processes (experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying) as well as their aesthetic and cognitive contributions. The proposal was implemented with around fifty students from three groups at a secondary school in Zaragoza, although the study focused on the bilingual group, composed of 17 students who engaged in a shared reading of Revolting Rhymes, written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. Working in groups, the students designed four illustrated picturebooks based on different tales from the original work. The educational research followed a classroom-based action research methodology, using both closed and open self-perception questionnaires. Along with teacher observation and the students’ final products, these instruments allowed the conclusion that the proposal promoted broad student engagement and that the active construction of knowledge (available design, designing, and redesigned outcomes) was largely satisfactory in both its artistic and linguistic dimensions.