Graphic Novels in the Classrooom
Gene Yang

At my first student teaching placement in Brooklyn I did a science unit project over a month. Towards the end, rather than testing them formally I gave students the options of creating a poem, rap, dance, drawing, skits, ABC book, just about anything they wanted to do. This project took more time than anticipated but it was well worth it. One of my students created a science vocabulary comic book. It was the best work I had seen from that student since I had been in his classroom. I made a copy of it because I thought it was such a neat idea and plan to use it as an example in my future classrooms. I now always include comic books as a form of graphic novels for assessment options.

“It doesn’t matter how quickly I ‘say’ the lecture. What matters is how fast you choose to read it! That rate of information-transfer is firmly in your control!”

Yangs idea of handing out “comic lectures” is a great idea. Growing up I struggled with reading and was rarely engaged because of the style of lessons that my teachers presented. As I was reading I started to wonder about how much I would have benefited from graphic novels. Some college classes are still a struggle because I am visual learner and can’t always follow at the rate a professor gives information. I’m interest to see how successful these comic lesson plans are. Hopefully they will be used in more and more classrooms and fit to the curriculum, many students would benefit from this.