Graphic Novel Read Alouds
We will begin by reading Hamster and Cheese; this is a story about a guinea pig at a pet shop. His cage door was slammed and the g fell off of his name plate. Now the animals at the pet shop think he is Guinea P.I and he is on a case trying to find out what happened to a missing sandwich. They make some predictions, like the snake has a square in its stomach, he must be the thief, right? You will have to read the story to find out the answer.
I chose this book because it is a great way to introduce our class Guinea Pig and learn about how to take care of our classroom pet and still learn about how comic books are laid out. We will discuss the frames, and how some frames do not even have words, they just have a picture. We will discuss what that picture is telling us, why is the picture important, why do they think the author chose not to have words on that particular frame. How do you make sound on a comic strip? We will discuss all of these issues during reading this book.
I believe using comic books with few words and lots of pictures will help my students stress level when it comes to writing, now they can do their pictures and then decide if they want words on that particular frame. This is one thing that most of my students love to do, draw pictures and color. I want to take what they love to do and turn into a writing activity that they will enjoy working on.
We will read And Then there were Gnomes, this is the next book in the series of Sasspants the private eye hamster in which the animals believe the pet shop is haunted and there is a ghost that lives there. During the read aloud of this book we will read a few pages and then the students will make a panel or series of panels of what they think will come next. During this read aloud we will concentrate on McCloud's techniques of deciding what to put in a frame and what is not needed in a frame. We want just enough to make it interesting and understandable. My students will begin their writings by journaling in a comic book fashion, they can make a frame and do their picture, spending a lot of time on getting their picture they way they want it, and then we will discuss what their picture is saying before even writing any words.
For practice of making our comic books as a class we will read some books like The Ferret's a Foot, this book I chose to try to get my students to use their imagination. I will read a few pages, and then we will do our own frame of what we think should happen next in the story. This is what Scott McCloud refers to as flow or making sure everything makes sense in your story or comic book, who wants to read a story they if they do not understand what it happening. We will begin my doing this as a group on the white board, students will take turns adding to the picture and then will add our word bubbles and even action words if needed.
After spending a few weeks on journaling graphic novel style, I would like to incorporate the Mr. Badger and Mrs. Fox series because it is about single parent homes and being homeless, this is something most of my students can relate to. First graders like to write about their life experiences and my goal is for them to understand they know about more than just violence. They could write about a trip they took with mom to the grocery store, or a family party they attended. I think once they get to writing we can work more on their imagination and writing about things that are make believe. During this time we will be learning how to make our own comic strips by drawing the panels and talking about what makes a panel and how to read a panel and exploring how we can make ours a little different than our friends. We can change the shapes of the panels, add more to our graphics to make them more specific, add more action or action words (revision in comics). We want to take our time to make sure all of the students are making their comics easy to follow so the reader know what panel to go to next, McCloud said this is one on the most important areas in writing comic books.
I am using graphic novels that are on my students reading levels so they will have a chance to reread the stories. My students love to read the books I have read to them, even when they can't read. This will also help them improve in reading and understanding of comic books and graphic novels.
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