Grade 3 students create comics telling immigration stories with online tool

Toronto students create comics about immigration Children in a Toronto social studies class have created comics about immigration with the help of an online tool.

TORONTO — Students in a Toronto social studies class have created their own comics about immigration with the help of an online tool.

The Grade 3 students at Jackman Avenue Junior Public School gathered the stories through personal interviews, then wrote the scripts and designed the comics’ backgrounds and avatars using a program called Pixton.

Adya Bhartia, 9, decided to interview a close family friend who she calls Aunt Ludivine, and made her comic about the process of the assignment coming together, but Bhartia didn’t see the project as work.

“It was more like a fun time I had on my hands, interviewing people and I love making Pixton comics and I like writing stuff,” Bhartia told CTV News Toronto Tuesday.

Bhartia says the project was a learning experience and discovered she had some similarities to her subject, because she too is an immigrant.

“My favourite thing about Canada was the really kind people. The people who are really polite, try and help you. I really like that, and my aunt also liked the same,’ Bhartia said.

“I also found it interesting that she was born in Normandy, France so I didn’t know that and I thought it was really interesting.”

“One things that really surprised me is sort of the different angles that students took,” Ian Lawrence, Bhartia’s teacher, said.

“One student, Adya, she went with making a comic about the whole process of making the comic, very meta, which is really cool,” he added.

“Another student just did a whole story from the perspective of his grandfather from Yugoslavia all the way to the process of immigrating to becoming a Canadian citizen. Very different process, but very cool comic as well.”

Lawrence also made a comic about his mother’s immigration story as example for students. She moved from Macau, to Hong Kong before arriving in Canada and working as a Toronto Public Health nurse.

“I wanted to show the students you never know who in your community is from another country and what story they brought with them to come to Canada,” said Lawrence.