Week 3: Hands-on help of ELA

Grade Level: 7-8

Topic: Book report alternative: Comic strips and cartoon squares using Comic Creator.

Standards Addressed:

Common Core Standards

W.8.6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

W.8.3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.

W.8.2. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.


NCTE/IRA NATIONAL STANDARDS FOR THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS

3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound–letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).

11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.

12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Learning Outcomes: 

Students examine graphic novels and comic books and discuss the important components of the genre, such as captions, dialogue, and images. They then use an online tool to create a six-panel comic highlighting six key scenes in a book they have read. By creating comic strips or cartoon squares featuring characters in books, students are encouraged to think analytically about the characters, events, and themes they've explored in ways that expand their critical thinking by focusing on crystallizing the significant points of the book in a few short scenes.

This activity invites the student to think symbolically. The students choose key scenes for their characters and books, find landscapes and props that fit the scenes, and compose related dialogue. These student representations of the books, with their multifaceted texts using symbols, images, texts, and metaphor, succeed in the classroom because they provide a snapshot of the students' comprehension of the ideas in the texts. The alternative to a traditional book report "allows students to create something unique and show their understanding of what they read."

Technologies Needed:

Comic creator website

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/comic/

Other internet resources

http://www.psu.edu/dept/inart10_110/inart10/cmbk1main.html
http://scottmccloud.com/

TimeLine for implementation

2-3 class sessions depending on familiarity of program.  

Integration/Implementation

This can be tied into class time after reading a novel, but also can be done after school for 3-4 thirty minute blocks.  I think that students will benefit from this if it is used as an alternate form of a book report instead of the traditional 5 page paper.  Giving the students this as another option is great.