Creating Cartoons and Comics in the Library

How can I use Cartoons and Comics in the Library?

Comic strips and cartoons are two engaging instructional tools to use in the library with all different grade levels. They are effective because they engage students in meaningful learning experiences. Students can own their learning of key skills such reading, writing, speaking and communicating. They are extremely effective for ELL students who can use pictures to effectively communicate their knowledge of content.

Why should I use Cartoons and Comics in the Library?

•        Comics are fun, interesting and motivating.
•       Comics promote a wide variety of skills: cognitive, intellectual, social, and cultural.
•     Can be used to teach different school subjects.
•        Can help students develop higher-order thinking skills (sequencing, predicting, inferring, synthesizing, analyzing, evaluating...etc).
•        Enhance students engagement with multimodal texts.
•        Make students aware of the multimodal means through which meanings are constructed and communicated.
•        Ideal teaching tools for teaching a target language
•        Visually illustrated content is much easier to process, understand and remember.
•        Can be used to teach reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills.

What are some ways I can use Cartoons and Comics in the Library?

• Digital storytelling: students (in small groups or individually) create a narrative storyline and illustrate it with relevant graphics.
• Students use comic strips to visually retell a read aloud read in the library.
• Provide students with blanked out comic strip and ask them to write a story based on the illustrated characters. (writing activity, promote predicting skills)
• Use comic strips to raise students awareness to topics such as racism, bullying, digital citizenship…etc.
• Use comics to improve students speaking skills by asking them to act out comics they created. Alternatively you can engage students in oral discussions about the content of the comics.

Tools to create Comics and Cartoons in the Library

Pixton

Is a web based application that can be used by educators and students. You can create a class for each class or grade level that comes to the library to make comics. It is easy to use, and you can buy different packages for students to use. 

Below is the comic strip I created using Pixton

The comic was easy to create. It allowed me to download the comic and it was easy to save. Students would find it easy to use. The con is the you have to purchase more of the images to use to create the comics.