Recommended Books

 

The following texts are recommended for teachers wanting to understand more about comics, their place in a literacy and language classroom, as well as pedagogical strategies for teaching them.

 

• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud

 

• 101 Outstanding Graphic Novels by Stephen Weiner

 

• Enter the Superheroes: American Values, Culture, and the Canon of Superhero Literature by Alex S. Romagnoli and Gian S. Pagnucci

 

• Teaching Visual Literacy: Using Comic Books, Graphic Novels, Anime, Cartoons, and More to Develop Comprehension and Thinking Skills by Nancy Frey and Douglas B. Fisher

 

• Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel by James Bucky Carter

 

• Getting Graphic!: Using Graphic Novels to Promote Literacy with Preteens and Teens by Michele Gorman

 

• Teaching Comics and Graphic Narratives: Essays on Theory, Strategy, and Practice by Lan Dong

 

• The Graphic Novel Classroom: POWerful Teaching and Learning with Images by Maureen M. Bakis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teaching Strategies

 

If you are interested in teaching graphic novels or comics in your language classroom, the following reading strategies and activites are a great way to get students engaged. These strategies have been adapted from Get Graphic.

 

• Tea Party: Put bits and pieces of a graphic novel on index cards. Students read their cards and listen to others during the tea party. Afterwards, students discuss various literary elements of the story-plot, character, setting, style, and theme-and record their predictions on a graphic organizer. The next day students read the section in its entirety and revisit the graphic novel to make additions and subtractions.

 

• Sequencing: Take panels from a page in a graphic novel and cut them up so that they are out of order. Have students put them in order and justify their choices in writing.

 

• Dialogue: Erase the text in word bubbles and have students add their own dialogue. Then have them rewrite the story, including the dialogue in quotation marks.

 

• Cumulative Storytelling: Erase the text in word bubbles and have students add their own dialogue into the first world balloon and pass it on to the next student. That student fills in the second word balloon and passes it on. This can be a variation on the dialogue activity.

 

• Summarizing: Once students become somewhat proficient in panel storytelling, the technique can be used to help them summarize information. A nine panel grid is particularly helpful.

 

• Comic Collaboration: Artistic students and literary students can create a comic strip. In a graphic novel, typically one person will write the story, another will draw the art, another will add the color, and yet another will draw the letters in the word balloons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teaching Tools

 

The following sites and applications can be used by students (and teachers!) to creat comics. These are excellent resources to use with the strategies outlined above, or for inspiring students' creative narrative response to the teaching of comics and graphic novels in the classroom.