Comic Book Presentations: Unleashing the Power of the Visual Learner
Here are some great projects and resources for communication in a visual medium without compromising rigor.
By Elijah Ammen
There is no denying that comic books and graphic novels have entered the mainstream conversation. Earlier this month, The Avengers came out in theaters to the tune of $641.8 million worldwide, just in the opening week. The Dark Knight Rises, the final film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, is expected to come close to breaking that record later this summer.
Comic books used to be a niche activity, but are increasing in popularity thanks to their film adaptations. The popularity explosion of graphic novels, manga, and comic book adaptations can be seen as a direct result of a generation of visual learners who are better able to focus with the added illustrations.
While (as a comic book nerd) I could wax eloquent about the uses of teaching comic books to your class, I understand that might not work for everyone: you have to teach your passions, not mine. However, comic books, regardless of your personal taste, are excellent presentation tools for a variety of literary reports. Here are a few things that can get you started:
Creative Writing Projects
Students enjoy designing their own work, and comic books as creative writing projects add another layer of expression. They are able to visualize scenes, which help them become more expressive in their writing. Websites like Storybird can help by letting them pick illustrations and then writing based on the visual prompt. Other sites like Pixton, ToonDoo, and Make Beliefs, allow pupils to create their own characters and worlds ranging from a three-block comic strip to an entire book. If you want a program that is not web-based, you can download a free trial of Comic Life. (Just a side note: these programs are all time-intensive. If you are in a time crunch, it’s always safer to use good old-fashioned pencil and paper.)
Make sure you have clear project guidelines, and then turn your class loose to create. Depending on your group, you may want to have a pre-writing brainstorming activity, or use concept mapping. You can hone in your focus and teach a specific standard, such as conflict and resolution, or you can research and discuss comics before making an original.
Book Reports
Creating comic books are ideal for book reports because they help learners remember key scenes and dialogue. This is especially useful when teaching plays, because it is already such a visual medium. This doesn’t have to be incredibly time consuming or artistically complex—you can use a very simple illustration worksheet in order to generate a visual reminder. You can also give them a few lines from a scene and tell them to use those to create a picture of the scene.
If you are already doing literature circles with your class, this is a great time to group them on a project with differentiated texts. Just remember to spread the artistic talent--one way to do this is to create jobs within a group and have a "job fair" where each person fills out mock applications and are recruited and hired by their fellow classmates.
Lesson Planet Resources:
This is an excellent one-sheet list of project guidelines for comic illustrations. It provides categories so pupils know what they will be graded on, as well as some design suggestions. It is easily adaptable to your project.
A lesson plan for a great launch event for a comic book project. It leads learners through critical thinking about presentations and the use of dialogue and visuals. This could be used to inspire thinking about their individual projects and begin generating ideas.
This plan provides more structure for the creative process, guiding learners through mapping ideas and themes, as well as the beginning, middle, and end of their story. Very useful for teaching story structure and standards like theme, plot, conflict, and resolution.
This focuses more on concepts like conflict and resolution. It also gives specific project requirements, like the number of panels and the use of onomatopoetic words.
In addition to some great discussion questions, this lesson plan has pupils choose two heroes—one from the real world, and another from a comic book—and has them use a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the two. This is a nice interdisciplinary tie-in with any contemporary events or social studies classes.
Use comic panels to help your class remember key scenes and dialogue in Shakespearean plays (even though it could be used for any play, or adapted for books). The lesson also gives a variant where pupils can do a gallery walk and compile what they think are the most important scenes and lines in the play. Great as an individual or group brainstorming activity.
Sometimes there isn’t enough time in a class to have a full comic book project; however, this very simple illustration sheet can still allow pupils to come up with a visual reminder of a scene in a story.