Five Ways to Use Comics in the Classroom – Practical Ed Tech

A few a long time ago I read New Yorker cartoonist Paul Noth talk at a convention in Texas. He was there to speak about his children’s ebook, How to Promote Your Household to the Aliens and the operate he does to assist bring comics into classrooms. One thing he explained that day has stuck with me at any time since. He explained he encourages youngsters to attract aliens for the reason that “nobody can notify them it is erroneous.”

That notion of “nobody can tell them it is wrong” applies to producing comics about aliens since nobody is familiar with what an alien appears to be like (even with what the producers of ALF and Mork & Mindy thought). The identical notion can be used when college students make comics about other matters. Students can build comics with scenes and people of their picking out to explain to fiction stories, to educate a short lesson, or to make basic greeting playing cards. In all scenarios it is hard to inform them “it’s wrong” when it comes to their character and scene decisions (as prolonged as they’re faculty-ideal).

Topics for Scholar Comics in the Classroom

Around the decades I’ve had my own learners develop comics and served a lot of some others provide comedian generation into their classrooms. Here’s a limited listing of some of the extra common comedian creation pursuits I’ve been concerned in in excess of the decades.

• Lab protection: pupils produce comics to illustrate safe science lab behaviors and what comes about if lab basic safety protocols aren’t followed.
• How to respond to bullying and similar challenges.
• E-book summaries and alternate finishes to favored publications.
• Developing historical fiction. Here’s a prompt I’ve utilized: what conversations would come about at the dinner table of an 18th century New England farming household?
• Developing your own superhero stories.

Resources for Earning Comics in the Classroom

The most straightforward way to produce comics may possibly be to have learners attract them on paper. It is easy to use Google Slides or PowerPoint to generate a template for a comedian strip. This video clip has instructions for how to do that with Google Slides. This video clip shows you how to do that in PowerPoint.

For people of us who are not adept at drawing, there are heaps of fantastic electronic tools for generating comedian strips. Make Beliefs Comix, Canva, Pixton, and Storyboard That are all very good alternatives. Canva and Make Beliefs Comix are free of charge for pupils and instructors whilst the other two alternatives are subscription-based mostly. A video tutorial on producing comics in Canva is readily available listed here.

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