Graphic Novels and comic books

This comes from an article, "Comics and Graphic Novels" by Samantha Cleaver, in the Scholastic Instructor magazine (May/June 2008).
"Comic books can be a great way to pique reluctant readers' interest and challenge those students who are fluent in more traditional literature."
"If we show kids how the written word actually has a visual component to it...and teach kids how to think that way, I think they'll become much better writers. Their word choice is much richer, and their creativity is boundless."
"Kids are at ease with combining visual and text information, and as new media becomes mainstream, comic books offer a way to reinforce traditional grammar and spelling within a layout that's familiar to kids."
"Writing comics asks kids to be writers, editors, and artists all at once."
Some ideas for using graphic novels and comic books in teaching:

• Comics are all about sequence. You could use a comic/graphic novel to illustrate the sequence/plot line of a story. They can also be used to teach character development, setting, theme, and any other story element.
  
• Comics are all about inferences. Between panels and within panels, the reader must make inferences in order to understand the story.
• Have students write a story or essay and then convert their writing into a comic book format. For example, students may write a metacognitive essay on things they do that help them to understand what they are reading. They then need to convert that to a comic strip. You could then take all of the comic strips and create a class book of reading strategies.
• You could use the storyboard format of comic strips to help students as a pre-writing strategy before doing a story or multimedia project such as a PowerPoint presentation or digital storytelling.
• You can use comic books and graphic novels as supplements to support a theme of a novel or short story that you are reading. Many of the classics have been converted to graphic novels. For example, you could use a graphic novel version of Romeo and Juliet to help students understand the story as you read Shakespeare's words.
• Make your last unit of the school year a comic book unit. Have students write an essay about they did and learned in your class that year and then convert it into a comic strip. Then compile all of the comic strips into a book for the class.
• Have students create comic strips about themselves as a getting to know you activity.
• Use comic books to teach onomatopoeia or dialogue.
• Use comics to study a time period. For example, if you are reading a novel that takes place in the 50's, you could look at the Archie Americana series and Archie classics as anthropologists and list clues of what life was like back then based on what you find in the comic.
  

Here are some resources that might help in incorporating comics and graphic novels in your classroom:

• www.graphicclassics.com
  
• Comic Life--most Macs come with this program as part of the package. Students can take pictures on the computer, import pictures from the web, or just print out the frames and draw their own pictures.
• The Bone series by Jeff Smith. Not one of my favorites, but the kids seem to like it.
• Mouse Guard by David Petersen. Hero's journey, knights of the round table, fantasy...all with mouse characters.
• American Born Chinese by Gene Yang. One of the BEST graphic novels out there. There are three parallel plotlines that weave together. This book addresses issues of race, stereotypes, and acceptance. A few years ago, I was on my district's book approval committee which decides whether or not a book can be used in a classroom setting. This book was not approved because many parents felt that it was too racial and most of these parents were still holding onto the idea that graphic novels aren't literature. I don't think they read the book. Too bad because it is amazing!
• --Bubbler: http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/ (Image drop easy create your own comic strip).
  
• http://www.bitstrips.com/ (you can create yourself as a cartoon character or create other characters and create a comic strip).
  
• http://www.makebeliefscomix.com (Simpler format/more limited to create comic strips).
• Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack by Shannon Hale. This is a twist on two classic fairytales. Great graphics and storyline.
• http://library.buffalo.edu/libraries/asl/guides/graphicnovels/