Friday, November 4, 2011

Using Comics to Teach

Have you ever considered using coming to teach important content? Every year I have students who just really can't stand to read. It breaks my heart. What has happened to this child so far in school that they have such a negative attitude toward books? As I thought about this, I wanted to think of some way to get kids reading social studies content without having to use their textbook. Thus, I discoved Comic Life. This program on my mac is amazing. It allows me to create comic-like formats to create my own stories. I used this to convert information from our social studies text into comics.
Below I linked two comics I created using Comic Life. One is about abolition in Pennsylvania, and the other is about The Walking Purchase. Both are used with our Pennsylvania History unit. I then had my students create their own comics using a section of the text. Then I copied the student created comics and had them share their work with the class. It was an awesome collaborative experience and a fun twist on reading our text.

The Walking Purchase comic
Abolition comic 

Have you ever used comics in the classroom? I'd love to hear your ideas!

2 comments:

  1. I have been looking for the "perfect" comic strips to use in class for teaching inferencing. Exactly what makes it funny? Have a few collected, but not quite enough to make a lesson yet.

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  2. What a neat idea! I never thought of using comics to teach inferencing. Thanks for sharing :)

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