Comics: “Little Drawings” (and Few Words), “Big Ideas”
By Sandra Cook, NC NIE
School’s starting! How do I know? Newspapers tell me so.
Ads feature “Back to School” sales. Photos feature parents and children at bus stops and in classrooms, and teachers are shown setting up rooms and greeting students. Stories reflect on writers’ past experiences as students and teachers, and opinion writers debate recent legislative decisions in editorials, columns, letters to the editor and political cartoons.
Another section tells stories about the start of school—the COMICS. On special days or holidays, the comics often focus on an event, holiday or season. Today, on the day after Labor Day, the multi-frame comics and single-frame cartoons show homes, steps outside of homes, bus stops and classrooms. Comics and cartoons offer different perspectives, those of students, teachers, spouses and even pets.
More comics are sure to run about school, as so many readers relate to the school experience. How might teachers use comics as ways to talk about the start of school and address Common Core State Standards or use comics all year to review and practice reading and writing, listening and viewing?
First, simply ask the questions that teachers use to assess whether their students comprehend stories they read and illustrations they view.
What are the messages about school in today’s Comics, published the day after Labor Day?
- One teen-ager doesn’t want to get up.
- Ninth graders (AND 12th graders) look “scared, clueless and dazed” when they enter school.
- One comic character celebrates the rain and a soaked lunch bag, noting what seems to me a strange, “comfort” in having school start off badly.
- A young teacher comments positively on a son’s behavior in school; his parents express their surprise.
- A wife offers her husband, a teacher, advice and help with technology.
- One character turns and speaks directly to readers, pledging to do his part to get a “good education.”
- A dog is sad because his master has gone to school and won’t be bringing food home to share with his dog.
- Another character is reading his class a paper he wrote about his summer, a dramatic telling of his father’s failed efforts to start a boat.
- One comic shows bullies set and ready to harass the main character on the first day of school.
- A single frame comic shows a young student waving to his mom and asking her, “how many days till Christmas vacation.”
What is each cartoonist’s purpose? What purposes do the Comic pages serve?
Yes, comics tell stories. Do today’s comics tell a story about school that a student, family member, teacher or pet might experience? Ask your students if they relate to any experience, any story told through Comics. Is that the cartoonist’s purpose, to tell stories that readers relate to, expressing readers’ actions, thoughts and feelings? Do any or all comics make you laugh or smile? Do cartoonists aim for readers to laugh or smile?
QUESTIONS GUIDE READING
Cynthia McFadden, a retired teacher, develops questions for students to answer about specific Comics. She says that comics provide high interest, short text for students to practice and review what they’ve learned.
Anyone who reads comics with young people (or adults) can match up Cynthia’s questions with Comics that run in area newspapers. Sample questions follow:
- What is taking up most of the character’s time (or attention)?
- What must the reader understand in order to appreciate the humor in a specific strip?
- What allusion must the reader and cartoonist share in order to understand the comic or cartoon?
- What can the reader infer from the cartoon or comic?
- What is the purpose of the simile (metaphor or other device) used in Y strip?
- Which uses onomatopoeia?
- In Y strip, which word(s) expresses action?
- What is the purpose of the apostrophe (or other punctuation) used in the X frame of Y strip?
CARTOONISTS USE STORYBOARDS (and SO CAN YOU!)
Serial comics employ storyboards to tell stories, using three or four frames during the week and more, in Sunday’s colored comics. The book, Story-Boarding Essentials: How to Translate Your Story to the Screen, Film, TV and Other Media by David Harland Rousseau and Benjamin Reid Phillips, explains that the term ‘storyboarding’ has its origins in animation. Though focused on video presentations, the book uses terms that apply to printed comics, such as “visual logic,” “visual narrative,” “visual road map” and “little drawings, big ideas.”
Teachers may use comics to show one way to tell stories and encourage students to use storyboarding as a way to report on what they read, hear or view. READWRITETHINK.org offers several lessons focused on cartoons or comics. Sample lessons are offered below; links lead to more teaching ideas. One lesson asks students to create a comic. Another proposes that students use the format of comics to report on books:
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/comic/
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/comic-creator-30021.html
What I learned this week about comics from reading the newspaper.
Mort Walker, creator and current author of Beetle Bailey, celebrated his 90th birthday on September 3. He plans to continue publishing the strip.
HOW DO YOU RELATE to COMICS?
Do you have favorite comics? Explain their appeal.
Teachers, which comics do you use in your teaching? How do you use them?