COMICS LESSON #5

PART ONE:

For this week’s comic activity, I’m going to use “Comics from Scratch,” but a
more simplified version of it that would work well with a science lesson in zoology
(Cary, p. 129). Cary describes a much bigger project, culminating in students
developing, writing, and producing entire comic strips and books. What I have in
mind is more pinpointed to working with a specific content area. I’d use “Bird and
Moon,” by naturalist Rosemary Mosco as our foundation, and as a class we
would study her work before I assigned pairs and began the project. She does a
wonderful job of blending science and humor that would pair well with engaging
students in learning about animal biology. After dividing up the classroom into
pairs, I would assign each pair an animal. Each pair would be responsible for
making two comics, a single panel, and a multi-panel strip. They would research
together, then take turns, one writing and one drawing, and then swapping for the
other comic.

The first comic would be a single panel project about their animal, done two
ways. First they would research, and make a drawing of their animal and label
the parts accurately.
Next, they would do another panel, but this time use humor, labeling the animal
parts in a fanciful and silly way.

Finally, they would swap jobs, and based on the research that they had done,
create a multi-panel comic about their animal that includes information on some
of the animals traits.
PART TWO:
I feel that using “Comics from Scratch” would give me a great way to tackle the
challenges for ELLs when studying science. Science can be a serious struggle
for an ELL, because it is so incredibly heavy in academic language (R&F, p.
208). A single paragraph could be at least half academic vocabulary they don’t
understand. In presenting this project, I would model a finished assignment of my
own, showing exactly what the content expectations are. We would also make a
list of key vocabulary that could be referenced as they embarked on researching
their animals. I would have thesauruses available so students could broaden
their vocabulary by looking up synonyms and antonyms. There is a built in
assessment to this assignment as well, given that the finished projects will
illuminate whether the students understood the content or not. If they missed
basic information, their attempt at humor in their comics won’t work, as the basis
of the humor won’t be applicable.