Literacy

Practical ideas

The following lesson ideas for using graphic novels and the comic medium embrace the values of A Curriculum for Excellence, through their various cross-cutting themes:

Creativity

Design a comic book cover: If time is limited, or as an initial short piece that can lead to longer work around comics, you can ask pupils to design a cover for a comic they would like to see. This may work especially well with girls, who may feel that ‘traditional’ comics are not designed with them in mind.

Citizenship

Debating: There are many controversial issues surrounding comics, such as female and male stereotypes, that can be used as the basis of a debate within class.

Enterprise

Book talks: Invite a specialist into the school to talk about comics.
Encouraging home reading: Do fathers at home read comics such as Viz or Hotspur? How does this affect the reading of the pupil? Pupils can talk about the comics their parents read now compared with the comics their parents read when they were younger. Are there any comparisons between the generations, for example reading the Beano? Cross-generational reading and explorations of what previous generations read could be an outcome here.
Paired-reading text: Comics can be used by pupils engaged in paired reading. Older pupils can introduce these texts to younger pupils, encouraging discussion on enjoyment of this medium, ease of reading, etc.

Enterprise and citizenship

Collection ownership: Have pupils work with the school librarian to make suggestions for purchase and promotion of a comics collection in the school. This is a useful way of using comics and developing a sense of ownership of the school library. Additionally, an engagement with stock and an understanding of issues around age and suitability enables discussions about ‘censorship versus selection’ to be opened up.
Comic reviews: Pupils can review titles, do a selection exercise for their library and produce a written piece about comics they liked. They can also write reviews of the comic/graphic novel sessions.

Creativity and enterprise

Invent a superhero or other character: Pupils can begin by copying, tracing and adapting existing material, but with encouragement will try out their own ideas.
Designing character masks: Pupils can design their own character mask and then ‘act’ out the strip while wearing their mask. They can then be photographed in action, using the images as the basis of the comic strip. Literal speech balloons can be created on card, which the actors hold up at relevant points, so that they are in the same form as the rest of the image.
Develop a newspaper-style, four-panel comic strip: Encourage pupils to create a short comic strip based on the styles of Peanuts, Garfield, Nemi or Calvin and Hobbes. Progression can be made onto creating longer narratives.
Designing a comic: This could be based on stories already written in class or on stories specifically created for the comic book material. The following section provides detailed tips for designing comics/comic strips.

Tools for designing your own comic

There are various software tools available to help pupils create their own comics/comic strips. Comic life (Mac users) and Photo Story 3 (PC users) are ideal, but even Microsoft Word can be used for this purpose.

Comic Life

When using this software, pupils can work out a story and sketch using a rough frame by frame storyboard. Digital photographs taken by and featuring pupils make the basis for the images, along with speech bubbles and descriptive captions from Comic Life’s library. Finally, the text is added and the strips can be printed.

Microsoft Photo Story 3

This free software allows the user to choose their favourite photos from the computer or from online photo-service collections, and then drops them onto a storyboard. These can then be quickly organised into a personal storybook.

Microsoft Word

Speech bubbles can be created easily with Microsoft Word’s Autoshapes. These can be completed by adding text and sticking photographs on top. You don’t even need to use pictures taken by pupils. An internet search of sites such as Google Image Search or Flickr can provide suitable images.

The following Word documents show how simple the process can be:

Word icon Word document: Example 1 of how to make a comic in Word (2.2 MB)
Word document: Example 2 of how to make a comic in Word (1.8 MB)