I recently started a comic illustration, casually assuming that my students had read or owned at least one comic. They had not. Even more shocking is that most of my students didn't know that all the Marvel and DC heroes they love come from comic books. Friends, if you love comics and want to see them live on, please listen: a huge portion of kids have no idea that Spiderman was a comic. Let that sink in... we have work to do.
How do you teach kids about comics that have never seen one before?
I picked up a bunch of Free Comic Book Day promo comics from Gutter Pop Comics. (link) Free comic book day comics are color-coded to indicate age-appropriateness. I selected all the "green" comics and found about twenty that had simple panel and diolouge layouts. The lesson was composed of a 5-10 minute introduction, then we spent the rest of class reading comics (SSR).
How to Read A Comic Lesson for Elementary Students (a rough outline)
Before spending a whole class reading comics We covered the following in this particular order:
First and most importantly we made the connection that the superhero we love all came from comic books.
The importance of taking care of a comic, I used the example of how "Action Comics NO.1" sold for $3 million.)
How to hold a comic and turn the pages. (Don't skip this or your comics will be ripped by the end of class.)
The overall layout of a comic.
How to identify panels and the order to read them in.
How to identify different speech bubbles and the order to read the dialogue bubbles in.
How to identify narrative blocks.
How to identify "ads" in comics and the fact that we can skip over them.
How to use the pictures to help us understand the story when we have difficulty reading certain words.
Before sustained silent reading, I tell the students that the objective is to try and read and understand the comic. If you are worried about a class using their time wisely, tell them you are going to ask them to explain what their comic was about to the class.
Some Closing Thoughts and Tips About Teaching Comic Book Reading to Children
Anyone who has a local comic book shop should partner up with local art teachers. Seriously, if none of the kids in your neighborhood are reading comics, how will your shop remain open?
I want to have a small library of comics in my classroom as this will help with literacy and some type of drawing and art literacy as well.
Traditional paper comics get beat up really fast. I think investing in hardbound or softcover reprint would be well worth the money for the long term.
You can find cheap comics at most comic book shops. You can often find old comics for $1-2 per issue. If you want a whole bunch of comics, make the store owner an offer for say $80 for 100 comics. It worked for me!
Thank you for reading my thoughts.
-The Red Wizard 9/29/21, 12:20 pm EST, Location: Earth Planet, Milky Way Galaxy.
