Making Comics: In the Classroom?

Scott McCloud's book "Making Comics" is very informational. I've never been one to like comics or graphic novels, but I can see that they can be of valuable use in the classroom.
There is always this assumption that you have to be able to draw well in order to make an effective comic, but McCloud takes us away from that assumption by emphasizing the point that "In short: There are no rules" (P5).
I really like how this book is set up. Not only does McCloud set an example for his readers as to how comics should look and read, he does so in an entertaining way. He's the type of writer who grabs your attention and writes in a conversational way. I felt like as I read, I could envision him speaking to me. I think a good comic would do this.
It seems that McCloud puts a strong emphasis on building characters with emotions that are evident to the readers. Sound familiar? That works the same way with novels. In the comics, this can be clear to the readers through facial expressions, body language, and of course, the words. I think that it might be easier for students to visualize in this format. However, I think that when it is the other way around, when the student is creating the comic strip, I imagine that they will struggle at times to make such efforts. I expect to hear excuses like "I stink at drawing," or "I can't think of anything..." Therefore, I think it is important to have the prompts such as the ones McCloud offers to get students thinking as well as explaining that great art doesn't necessarily make a great comic. Storyline, plot, conflict, characte development, etc., are all part of the game--just like novels or short stories.
I found a blog that has many linked articles as to why comics are effective in the classroom. As I scrolled through the list, I couldn't find one argument against comics in the classroom. In fact, I can find little, if any, information about opposing views of comics in the classroom.

Overall.

Overall, the Teaching Language and Composition course went pretty well. I think we read some great books, my favorite being Harry Noden's "Image Grammar" and Stephen Koch's "Writer's Workshop," and learned some worthwhile things about teaching writing to our future students. Lucky for me, I actually got to teach my two week unit on writing personal narratives and have gotten a lot of ideas for future lessons like that.

I think everyone brought a lot to the table as far as group activities are concerned. There were some creative ideas and I plan on incorporating some of them eventually!

The big writing piece project we had for the class was tough for me due to time limitations and such, but I think it is a valuable project to get us thinking about the writing process, creativity, structure, and the whole nine yards of writing. I find that our course has a been a great example of how writing workshop works and worthwhile to students. However, I'd like to find a couple of different ways for students to read each story. Some students do not own a computer or will not take the reading seriously, so maybe something like every Friday after the writing pieces are complete, they have to do a reading rotation around the room and read silently as well as answer questions on a worksheet. I'd really have to plan it out to make it work though! I just don't find activities such as a student reading their story to the class aloud is effective.

The only book I didn't enjoy very much was our "Making Comics" book. Personally, I hate comics and graphic novels and I am not an artist, but the author, Scott McCloud gives a great 411 about making comics to his readers. I think it would be valuable to give students an opportunity to use graphic novels and comics in the classroom due to the fact that some readers struggle to create an image in their head...

McCloud describes things clearly in an entertaining way, but I just struggle to enjoy reading this type of formatted book.

Below is a short video clip of how to create a novel that "sells!" created by novelist Andrea Rains Waggener. It is simple and Waggener uses her novel as an example to explain the steps of writing. It's pretty creative and well thought out.

A LITTLE Change of Heart <3 <3

I can't believe another semester has come to an end. Even more surprising is that I am going to walk away soon with a Bachelor's degree--And I did it in 4 years. (I'm giving myself a pat on the back.)

But there's always that question. Is this really what I want to do for the rest of my life? Well, I love being in front of people. And teaching offers just that. However, after doing our 2-week unit, I'm a little nervous about handling young adults. Therefore, as I've sat in a couple of my literature courses this semester, I've come across a new passion--teaching college students. Yes, they too, are young adults, but at a much different level. I would absolutely love to teach an English that is topic-focused with focused students! I'm currently in Women's Literature and I am finding a huge passion for women writers and the Feminist Movement era. I would love to learn more about it or even better, teach it in my near future to interested college students, like myself.

There is a downfall though, I would definitely miss out on teaching Shakespeare and other British Literature authors, and classic novels such as "To Kill a Mockingbird," but I'm just really trying to find my place in the world right now. I started off college as a pre-medical student--desperate to find a job that paid lots of money. Then I changed to teaching and stuck with it. I think it is the right career path for me, but I just need to figure out at what level. My dreams of becoming a vet. are not attainable due to my awful performance in science, but I find that I have a strong passion in English--therefore, I THINK this is what is meant for me.

This is not a change of heart for me. I don't want to switch majors and start all over. I just need to rethink my options. Dr. Stephanie Peterson does sound pretty nice though. :)

Rubrics

For my unit, I had to create a rubric for a personal narrative students wrote. I tried to make it very fair and clear, but as I began to grade, I noticed how cut and dry they are. You either get a high score or a low score. It seriously seems like there is no inbetween.

As I read the article, "The Trouble with Rubrics," I can see some of the problems there are. Alfie Kohn quotes Linda Mabry by saying that "rubrics 'are designed to function as scoring guidelines, but they serve as arbiters of quality and agents of control' over what is taught and valued." I definitely see this problem! Later in the article, it says, "...students whose attention is relentlessly focused on how well they're doing often become less engaged with what their doing." I think students worry too much about their grades that this distracts them from putting forth a 100% learning effort. Instead of understanding the educational value behind a project, students often try to get the work done as quickly as they can and follow a checklist of requirements--this just doesn't seem right!

Now the question to ask ourselves as educators is what can we do to get away from this way of thinking? What do you all think?

The Professor and the Madman

The beginning was quite catchy, with the whole ordeal with the murder and how the author portrayed the city of Lambeth--I thought it really gained my attention, but then I was unsure where the plot line was going to go. However, a few things were quite interesting to learn & will add to the reportoire of random knowledge I have inside this 3 pound organ in my head. This wad of information about the Oxford English Dictionary began on page 25, "It took more than seventy years to create the twelve tombestone-size volumes that made up the first edition of what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary...Just as English is a very large and complex language, so the OED is a very large and complex book. It defines well over half a million words. It contains scores of millions of characters, and, at least in its early versions, many miles of hand-set type." I think this emphasizes the fact that this project is HUGE! Not only is it a massive project, it is a project of pure genious.

The relationship between Murray and Minor is well-maintained throughout the making of the OED. One of the suprising things about Minor is that he was a surgeon who gave significant contributions to Murray, sending thousands of handwritten items to Murray who was nearly fifty miles away. I thought about this. And today, fifty miles doesn't seem like much, but if you think back to the earlier days, and the lack of technology available, I bet that was considered far distance. So I think the relationship they maintained in this project is pretty impressive. It's kind of funny that the two never truly met, until Murray seeked Minor out, only to find out that he was a murder, seriously insane, and locked up in an asylum (apparently England's harshest).

I think one of the main focuses of this book is how two very unlike men maintain such an unusual relationship. Not only is this book educational, but it is a story one might not believe until they have read it!

Parts of Speech rap

Before I started my unit, my cooperating teacher asked me to come up with an activity before the unit so I could get used to being in front of her class. She asked me to create an activity for the parts of speech, so I frantically began looking for ideas.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to do the activity with the class because they fell behind on a lesson they were doing that week, but I found this video that I really want to share with you all as I was looking for ideas.

A student wrote this for her English class. How fun would it be to have students make up songs for a part of speech and share them with the class?? Check it out, you will love it!!

Harry Noden's Image Grammar

Let me just start out by saying I absolutely LOVE Noden's idea of image grammar. I just can't believe that he actually designed and created it. My cooperating teacher actually teaches it to her class for a creative writing unit. When she asked the class, "Who invented image grammar?" my jaw dropped and I instantly wanted to yell, "Harry Noden!" as the class sat silently waiting for the answer.

In the beginning of his book, Noden says on page 2 that "when an author lacks a visual eye, his or her writing has no heart and soul: images lie lifeless like cadavers in a morgue." Therefore, he created the five basic brushstrokes: the participle, the absolute, the appositive, adjectives shifted out of order and action verbs. I love all of them and I think they add a definite image to words, but I do have two favorites! I enjoy reading AND writing with the brushstrokes adjectives shifted out of order and action verbs. As I observed my cooperating teacher teach these, I think the students favored them as well. They had so many good examples for adjectives out of order, such as "The airport, a hub of activity, is located in Cleveland, Ohio." and "The airport, a place that never sleeps, is my destination." There were some other really good examples, but I didn't get a chance to write them down as I eagerly listened.

I love how at the end of each chapter Noden gives us activities that we could implement into the classroom. I really wanted to check out the website he gave us on page 24 of the text, but I couldn't get it! Did anyone have any luck with nando.net?

On pages 36-37, Noden gives us an idea that Janet Olsen, a teacher, created for students. The activity consists of students to write a description, draw and color an image of the description, discuss the drawing with a partner, and then revise the description after comparing it to the picture, to implement a creative writing activity. I absolutely love this idea! It not only gets students thinking creatively, but it teaches them to write with an image in mind. Another activity I like is explained on page 43, where random items are placed in various purses and students are separated into groups. They are to then examine the items and write a description about the owner. I think this would be fun!

Noden not only describes how brushstrokes are important, but other things in writing are too such as similes, metaphors, personification, etc. It's funny that I'm reading this book while I teach my unit of writing personal narratives because I feel like using such techniques is so fresh in my mind.

I also like how Noden goes into how to use certain punctuation and sentence fragments to entice readers. I think students assume that teachers always want detailed sentences with a whole bunch of adjectives to describe an image, but it doesn't have to involve that!

One activity that I found to be a little out there is described on page 137, "Perform a magic trick," where you tie a rope around your neck. I don't think I would do something like this! Would you? And why?

The last thing I wanted to talk about was Noden's section on writing introductory leads beginning on page 164. I remember this lesson vividly from his class I took last fall and I REALLY enjoyed it! I remember doing a series of leads to begin a lesson plan and I found them on my computer so I thought I'd post them on here! See below:

1. Statistical lead: “To be or not to be…” Can anyone name which play this is from or what author composed these lines? This author has written 37 plays (plays that have been found at least) and is one of the most famous writers of all time. Born in 1564 under the reign of Elizabeth I, he wrote plays in the form of comedy and tragedy. Some people think he is not the true writer of the plays and he is homosexual—myths or facts?
Lesson: Introduction to Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. Students will get a general background of Shakespeare, a brief introduction to Hamlet and its history and then begin reading Hamlet together as a class.

2. Experimental Lead: Students will take a survival guide test assessing their knowledge if they would survive being on a stranded island just as the characters in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies do.
Lesson: This will be an introduction to Lord of the Flies, a novel about boys who experience a plane crash and become trapped on an island. The stranded boys become chaotic and almost inhumane deprived of general survival skill knowledge and leadership qualities. This lead will bring the class into a discussion on what would happen if a group got stranded on an island. Students will be able to put themselves in the shoes of the characters.

3. Surprise Lead: As students arrive to class, two teachers will be playing the role of the characters Romeo and Juliet, in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Teachers will speak in the language of Shakespeare’s time before class begins and will also be in costume. When the bell rings, the instructors will recite part of a scene aloud from the play Lesson: An introduction to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Acting it in front of the students will foster interest and allow for students to listen and try dissecting the meaning of the language.

4. Personalized Lead: Inform the class on the following issue: Pollution/littering and how to cut down on waste—the other day I saw a driver throw a banana peel out his window! Can you believe this? I mean first of all someone could slip (joke), but more importantly this is a form of pollution to our environment! Did you know that it takes a banana peel three to four weeks to decompose? I mean come on! This is 2009; we need to start to taking care of our environment. GO GREEN, right? Not only do people throw out banana peels, but they throw paper, plastic, Styrofoam, aluminum, even cigarettes and more into our environment. These things take even longer to decompose. Scientists estimate that an aluminum can takes up to 200-500 years to decompose. So why do people litter? Well, they are lazy, careless, not aware that they are littering, assume that others will pick it up, and probably dozens of other excuses. Something needs to be done about this, don’t you think?
Lesson: Students will research a problem within their community, school, workplace, etc, that they find as a major issue. They will discuss what the problem is, why it is a problem, and what can be done to eliminate it. Students will present the issue to class.

5. Imaginary Lead: Babies typically talk in babbles that adults can’t understand. But one day, while at the park, you’re sitting on a bench next to two babies. They start babbling, when all of a sudden you realize you can understand them. Even more, they are plotting a nefarious plan. Write this scene.
Or
Create a character that has an unusual phobia. Write a scene that causes that character to face his fear.
Lesson: This lesson could be used for a creative writing class and used as a prompt to engage students in writing a creative story. Several other prompts could be used so students can share their stories to the class.

I briefly browsed the CD that came with the book which is filled with images, but I'd like to find some more that could be used for classroom activities because I think there is SO MUCH you can do with image grammar. I wish I had more time to focus 100% on the book because I think it it extremely helpful for teaching students be creative in their writing.