Topic: Getting the Most from Comic Strips

Purpose of this blog: Review of interesting articles and ideas in past English education journals, K-12.

10-second review: I can’t believe I am reviewing this article. I don’t usually deal with comic books in the classroom. But I’m a big fan of a few comic strips—Funky Winkerbean, Blondie and Dagwood, Peanuts, Beetle Bailey, Ziggy, Dennis the Menace, Crankshaft, Curtis, etc.—and they often use vocabulary that can be fairly sophisticated. Some of the ideas in this article could also be useful.

Title: “Using Comic Books [Strips] to Teach Reading and Language Arts.” EH Swain. Journal of Reading (December 1978), 253-258.

Activities:

Summarization. Have students write a one-sentence summary of a comic strip [not as easy as you might think RayS.].

Detecting Mood: Using a comic strip, have students find pictures that represent a particular mood.

Predicting: Provide students with all the frames of a comic strip except the last one and ask them to draw the last frame. [Nothing wrong with using stick figures for those of us who are drawing-challenged. RayS.]

Characterization: Have students select a central character of a comic strip and choose one adjective that would describe that character.

Figurative Language: Have students find slang words in comic strips. Define the words.

Comment: The newspaper, including headlines and comic strips, is a gold mine for vocabulary. It is also useful for finding gaffes in usage and spelling. Headlines can also be useful in teaching punctuation. Comic strips might be a good way to introduce newspapers, which many homes no longer have. RayS.