Reflection
The name of my comic is “The Three Branches of Government.” It’s intended for high school government or civics classes and it is obviously designed to teach students a little about the separation of powers in the U.S. government. The information in the comic might seem a little elementary; to the uninitiated, it could be assumed that high school students already know most of this material, but as my experience teaching government at the high school level has taught me, this is not the case.
I think this comic strip would be good way to introduce the topic of the three branches. I would use it as an activator activity and hand it out as a copy to students at the start of class. I would also have a discussion question or two on the board for students to use to guide their thought process as they are reading the comic. The main point is to engage learners and get them interested in what is going to be discussed. Comics are a great way to do this as they are a familiar medium to students and contain both images and text. And, perhaps most importantly to some struggling students, there aren’t a lot of words.
I tried to inject a good amount of humor into the comic strip; a few laughs go a long way in the classroom and disarm the students. They rarely expect humor in lessons and when they do see it, they respond to it positively. But, more importantly, there is some good information in the comic strip that can function as their notes for the day. The strange man in the suit dispensing unwanted information on government is actually very spot-on in his random ramblings, and I think students would find learning from this oddball a welcome respite from the usual lectures, power points, and text readings.
The biggest challenge I face in doing this assignment was creating the comic itself. Being a fan of comic books years ago I had hoped to create a flashy, Marvel Comics-style graphic novel about George Washington and the crossing of the Delaware River at the Battle of Trenton. But not being a skilled artist, I examined over half a dozen online comic makers only to find that none of them would work for what I had in mind. They could create good looking comics, but it just didn’t match what I had envisioned. I registered for many of these websites and started to build my comics, but each of them ended up badly for one reason or another. Very frustrated, I took a break from the assignment, then came back later and settled on something completely different. I liked the wittycomics.com comic strip maker because it was simple, and the limitations of the software made me think about the assignment differently. The strange, clip-art stylings of the characters and backgrounds were funny when taken out of context to the point of absurdity. I enjoyed creating the comic and letting these odd characters tell us about government.
Comics are a useful and undervalued tool for the teacher because they utilize the principles of dual coding and multimedia instruction and do so in a way that appeals to young audiences. By activating both visual and verbal learning pathways in the brain, retention of information is greatly increased over using just one of these pathways alone. Plus, comics are simply a lot of fun. Students are reading and interpreting images, and they are enjoying it. The first part of that previous sentence might be the most amazing--students are reading. Believe me, that is no mean feat in today’s classroom. Students who are not motivated to read blocks of text might read a comic or graphic novel, and the information in comics can be just as useful as traditional text. If you take into account that many students will not read regular text, but will read a comic, then the comic is actually much more valuable than the more traditional textbook.
Having grown up reading comic books, I had personal definitions about them that might not be in sync with the modern lingo of the genre. What I call “comics” are the comic strips that you see in the newspaper: Garfield, Peanuts (which I always called “Snoopy”), Dilbert, etc. “Comics” to me are supposed to be funny. They’re also short and only in color on Sundays.
Comic books are the thin, paperback serials that involve action heroes like the X-Men and Superman. They have pretty serious subject matter compared to comic strips. I remember feeling pretty grown up when I stepped up to reading them, due to more mature subject matter. I thought the term “graphic novel” was a term made up by grown people who still read comic books but didn’t want to sound like they were reading children’s books. Now I know that graphic novels are the bound hardback collections of the individual comic books from a series. They are released at spaced intervals (quarterly, biannually) and are of high quality. I have a few friends who used to get the individual comic books but now just wait to the end of the year and get the graphic novels of their favorite superheroes.
To me, a “cartoon” is an all-encompassing term to describe all of these formats. Superman is a cartoon character that appears in comic books and graphic novels, while Charlie Brown is a cartoon that appears in comic strips. Mainly though, when I think of cartoons I think of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
Overall, I found this assignment to be fun! Much like the photo sequence assignment of Module 2, I had to think in ways that I had not done before to complete the assignment. The readings definitely helped me to understand what goes in to making comics and the reasons they are a useful instructional tool. I’d like to make a trip to the local comic book shop here in Carrollton, The Quest, and see if they have any historical comics or graphic novels that I could use in my classroom. I also think it would be a great project for students to create their own comic as we did in this assignment. Doing so requires you to first of all know what you’re talking about in regards to the subject, and then display the information in an entertaining way on the paper, translating knowledge not only into words but also images. This is definitely something I’ll share with my colleagues in the Fall.
I think this comic strip would be good way to introduce the topic of the three branches. I would use it as an activator activity and hand it out as a copy to students at the start of class. I would also have a discussion question or two on the board for students to use to guide their thought process as they are reading the comic. The main point is to engage learners and get them interested in what is going to be discussed. Comics are a great way to do this as they are a familiar medium to students and contain both images and text. And, perhaps most importantly to some struggling students, there aren’t a lot of words.
I tried to inject a good amount of humor into the comic strip; a few laughs go a long way in the classroom and disarm the students. They rarely expect humor in lessons and when they do see it, they respond to it positively. But, more importantly, there is some good information in the comic strip that can function as their notes for the day. The strange man in the suit dispensing unwanted information on government is actually very spot-on in his random ramblings, and I think students would find learning from this oddball a welcome respite from the usual lectures, power points, and text readings.
The biggest challenge I face in doing this assignment was creating the comic itself. Being a fan of comic books years ago I had hoped to create a flashy, Marvel Comics-style graphic novel about George Washington and the crossing of the Delaware River at the Battle of Trenton. But not being a skilled artist, I examined over half a dozen online comic makers only to find that none of them would work for what I had in mind. They could create good looking comics, but it just didn’t match what I had envisioned. I registered for many of these websites and started to build my comics, but each of them ended up badly for one reason or another. Very frustrated, I took a break from the assignment, then came back later and settled on something completely different. I liked the wittycomics.com comic strip maker because it was simple, and the limitations of the software made me think about the assignment differently. The strange, clip-art stylings of the characters and backgrounds were funny when taken out of context to the point of absurdity. I enjoyed creating the comic and letting these odd characters tell us about government.
Comics are a useful and undervalued tool for the teacher because they utilize the principles of dual coding and multimedia instruction and do so in a way that appeals to young audiences. By activating both visual and verbal learning pathways in the brain, retention of information is greatly increased over using just one of these pathways alone. Plus, comics are simply a lot of fun. Students are reading and interpreting images, and they are enjoying it. The first part of that previous sentence might be the most amazing--students are reading. Believe me, that is no mean feat in today’s classroom. Students who are not motivated to read blocks of text might read a comic or graphic novel, and the information in comics can be just as useful as traditional text. If you take into account that many students will not read regular text, but will read a comic, then the comic is actually much more valuable than the more traditional textbook.
Having grown up reading comic books, I had personal definitions about them that might not be in sync with the modern lingo of the genre. What I call “comics” are the comic strips that you see in the newspaper: Garfield, Peanuts (which I always called “Snoopy”), Dilbert, etc. “Comics” to me are supposed to be funny. They’re also short and only in color on Sundays.
Comic books are the thin, paperback serials that involve action heroes like the X-Men and Superman. They have pretty serious subject matter compared to comic strips. I remember feeling pretty grown up when I stepped up to reading them, due to more mature subject matter. I thought the term “graphic novel” was a term made up by grown people who still read comic books but didn’t want to sound like they were reading children’s books. Now I know that graphic novels are the bound hardback collections of the individual comic books from a series. They are released at spaced intervals (quarterly, biannually) and are of high quality. I have a few friends who used to get the individual comic books but now just wait to the end of the year and get the graphic novels of their favorite superheroes.
To me, a “cartoon” is an all-encompassing term to describe all of these formats. Superman is a cartoon character that appears in comic books and graphic novels, while Charlie Brown is a cartoon that appears in comic strips. Mainly though, when I think of cartoons I think of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
Overall, I found this assignment to be fun! Much like the photo sequence assignment of Module 2, I had to think in ways that I had not done before to complete the assignment. The readings definitely helped me to understand what goes in to making comics and the reasons they are a useful instructional tool. I’d like to make a trip to the local comic book shop here in Carrollton, The Quest, and see if they have any historical comics or graphic novels that I could use in my classroom. I also think it would be a great project for students to create their own comic as we did in this assignment. Doing so requires you to first of all know what you’re talking about in regards to the subject, and then display the information in an entertaining way on the paper, translating knowledge not only into words but also images. This is definitely something I’ll share with my colleagues in the Fall.