Illustrating with words, writing with images: Teaching portuguese language with visual arts

Abstract

This proposal presents a transdisciplinary pedagogical project on writing and illustration, framed within the formal teaching of Portuguese Language and Drawing subjects in the 12th grade of the Portuguese public education system. Innovative learning methodologies are proposed which aim to enrich educational experiences, to reinforce knowledge networks and social ties, to encourage paths of (self)discovery and to strengthen autonomous, complex, multidisciplinary and creative thinking. This approach, within the scope of the study of narrative-descriptive and poetic texts, was triggered by the handwritten notes the writer Eça de Queiroz kept in his cabinet and which constituted a fundamental strategy in his creative writing process. Thus, this project aims to develop in students from two different courses, the ability to freely transcribe something observed, to draw the visual imaginary after reading a colleague’s text, to produce an illustration with a free theme and style and to write a text based on a colleague’s drawing, assuming subjectivity and identity as determining dimensions in the creation of intertextual relations. The virtual presence of Eça de Queiroz Foundation on social networks was used to access and work with the writer’s own materials.