debbie oestreicher's List: Comics in the Classroom

Are you looking for a way to motivate reluctant readers, engage urban youth, develop the comprehension skills of second-language learners, or teach visual literacy to elementary level students? Have you considered comics? That's right, comics! More and more teachers are finding that once-maligned comics, and their big brothers graphic novels, can be effective tools for teaching a multitude of literacy skills to students with a variety of learning needs.

This news story outlines why comic books may be a great way to promote reading in reluctant readers as well as help teach writing, emotions, and more.

Take an in depth look at the recent trend of using comics in the classroom, whether it is appropriate for the classroom, and resources for teaching with comics and graphic novels.

Understand how using comics and graphic novels can help teach complex reading skills, punctuation, outlining, paragraphing, and literary terms.

Read about this initiative in Maryland elementary schools, then read the research behind it, get sample lessons, and watch videos of students in action.

The last half of this podcast features Dr. Peter Coogan, Director of the institute for Comic Studies as he discusses comics in the classroom.

This teacher describes the value of comics in his fourth grade classroom.

Allow students to create timelines on Our Timelines. The timelines can be a 5 to 140 year span. Students fill in the time period, the event description and the event type. Students can also see a timeline of events that happened on their birthdays. This is a great resource for teaching kids about timelines and visualizing history. Use for history lessons, literature timelines, personal timelines, etc.

Story Top is a simple comic strip creator. Students can create an account on Story Top where they can save, share with classmates, and print out comic strips that they create. Students can choose from a set selection of backgrounds, images, and text bubbles (they aren’t able to upload their own images). Using the Story Top clip art and backgrounds, students can create a fun comic strip about almost any topic with a simple drag-and-drop interface.