BAM! Comics, Graphic Novels? You Name It, We Got It!

Do you hear that?!  No, you don't?  It's because there is no noise... students are so into making their own comics, they aren't speaking.  Ok, not completely true, the silence is broken by "Mrs. Ehll, come here!...Look at my comic!"  All of November before Thanksgiving Break, ALL grades studied comics and graphic novels.  This was the first time I taught this unit and I feel it went quite successful. 

 I LOVE hearing students ask where the graphic novels are so they can check them out considering at the very beginning of the unit the majority of students had never heard the term "graphic novel" and only about half the students in classes had heard the term, "comics".

I used the following resources with students: 

Toon Books provided the younger students with read aloud comics that I projected on the board.  It also has online templates for their own 1 and 3 panel comics.  Students used these paper templates to draw their own comics.

I used this resource from Tracy Edmunds to teach 3rd-5th gr students vocabulary and the directional movement of reading a comic.  They used Make Beliefs Comix to craft comics after they played Professor Garfield's Reading Ring,  but Scholastic Graphix was by far the older students favorite comic creator based on votes.

Students were so excited to study this type of book--I'm glad I was able to shed a positive light on this fantastic form of visual literacy!