Putting the Sunday comics to works

Teaching Pre K-8, Mar 2000 by Klatt, Beverly Anne

Ready to toss last Sunday's comics into the recycling bin? Well, don't! Bring them to class instead - they're great for developing language arts skills

If you're like me, you're always looking for fresh approaches to teach and motivate your students. I found that comics can help me teach a wide range of language arts skills. Comics relax students, making them more open to learning. Besides, reading comics is fun and reading should be fun.

Several activities based on the longer Sunday comics have worked for me with students in second, third and fourth grades. In each activity, I first modeled what I wanted the students to do. The activity then progressed over several days from the whole class to small groups and, lastly, to individual work.

The first activity. This required little preplanning. I showed a transparency of a comic strip. Reading questions from the board, I modeled my thought process by talking aloud as I came up with the answers.

I read the following questions from the board: 1) What is the name of your comic strip? 2) Who is the main character? 3) Describe him or her. 4) What do you like best about the main character? 5) What do you like least about him or her? 6) List any words you don't know. 7) How many different characters are in your comic strip? 8) What is happening? 9) Compare the main character and any other character. These generic questions can be used repeatedly with any comic strip.

Next, I divided my students into small groups. Each group chose a leader and a secretary. (The jobs rotated; they teach leadership and group skills.) The groups selected different strips, but they answered the same questions. They were allowed to skip any one question. After the students learned the process in small groups, I had them answer the same questions individually, but, of course, with fresh comic strips.

A similar activity with harder questions followed the same progression. These questions were: 1) Give the name of the illustrator; 2) Explain why you picked this particular strip; 3) Describe the personality of the main character; 4) Pretend you're describing the comic strip to a friend who is blind; 5) Explain whether you would want the main character as a friend; 6) If you were writing this comic strip, what would happen next?

Main ideas to inferences. Again, I showed a transparency of a comic strip. This time, I wrote not only the questions, but three possible answers for each question. For instance: (Supporting details) What time of day is it? a. evening b. morning c. afternoon. (Main idea) What is the point the illustrator is trying to make about the subject? a. Garfield is in a bad mood; b. There's nothing on television; c. He wants to have fun. (Inference) Why did Garfield go to sleep? oL He was sleepy; b. He wanted to dream; c. He was in love.

In a natural extension of the preceding exercise, the entire class - with my guidance -- wrote questions and three possible answers for each question about a specific comic strip. Later, I divided the students into small groups. These groups wrote their own questions and three possible answers for a comic strip of their choice. The groups then exchanged papers and made corrections as needed. Finally, every group shared the questions and answers with the whole class.

The student-generated questions made great learning centers! All members of each group copied their set of questions and answers in their very best handwriting. Then 1 laminated the comic strips and the separate question sheets. Each set of questions included the names of the three authors. This meant that every student contributed to the learning center, helping to build self-esteem. Noun and verb games. After teaching a lesson on nouns, I showed my students a transparency of a comic strip. Then I wrote on the board as many nouns as I could think of based on the illustrations and words in the strip. Again, I modeled my thought process by talking aloud while I came up with the nouns.

Again, I divided the class into small groups. Each group picked a leader and a secretary. I showed a transparency of a longer comic strip, set a timer and asked the students to list as many nouns as they could find that were suggested by the illustrations and words. When the buzzer sounded, I collected the papers.

I wrote their words on the board. The other groups used dictionaries to challenge any words they didn't think were nouns. The groups won or lost one point, depending on whether a challenge was upheld. The group with the largest number of points won. Adapting this game to verbs was more difficult, but just as much fun.

Thinking skills. To encourage higher level thinking skills in reading, 1 asked: 1) What is happening in the comic strip? 2) Has anything like this ever happened to you or someone you know? Explain. 3) What is the message the author wants us to get? 4) Tell about the things that really could happen and the things that couldn't. 5) How are Snoopy and Charlie Brown like Garfield and Jon? How are they different? 6) Do you like this comic strip? Why?