Using Graphic Novels in the Classroom

      Throughout the years it has been noted by teachers that males tend to perform lower in reading profeciency tests than females do. Many studies have found that this gap in ability has begun to get larger over time. As males struggle with reading they begin to see reading as a task that is unenjoyable and as a result fail to improve. This is a problem that needs to be fixed, and many educators have begun to search for ways to improve male reading and transform it into an activity that males will actually enjoy. Gavigan. K explores a possible solution to this issue in her paper entitled "More Powerful than a Locomotive: Using Graphic Novels to Motivate Struggling Male Adolescent Readers." Here she discusses how using graphic novels in the classroom can help improve male adolescent reading skills and make the activity of reading one that they actually find pleasurable.

       She started her study by creating a graphic novel book club, and she got four boys who struggle with reading to participate in it. The students partook in twelve book club sessions, and in each session they were able to have twenty minutes of silent reading followed by ten minutes of discussion. At the end of the book club the teachers noticed an improvement in the students' value of reading scores, and their reading comprehension. The students even articulated that their motivation to read had been enhanced by the illustrations in the graphic novels that they read. The students said that they prefered reading Graphic novels "Because I can understand mostly what’s happening right away…If you don’t understand something, maybe the picture can help you out a little". Based on this comment we can see that the combination of text and art seemed to help the students make sense of the vocabulary and the content more easily than if they had been reading text-only literature.

      Based on this study we can see that graphic novels are a good resource to bring into the classroom because of their multimodal nature. Students who are not strong readers are able to compensate by creating meaning from the visuals in the text. Graphic novels are a resource that can be used in a variety of different subject areas as well. Subjects such as religion, english, and history can use graphic novels to present information to the class in a way that is more interesting and accessible. Gavigan even suggests that graphic novels can be used as stepping stones, and once a student becomes comfortable with a story, you can give them the text version to read.

      Another strategy that can be used to enhance student learning is to get students to create their own comic strips or graphic novels. The website http://www.bitstripsforschools.com/ is an excellent resource that allows students to create avatars of themselves, as well as make made-up characters and use them to express themselves through their own comic strips. The website also categorizes activities by school subject and contains many creative assignment ideas that you can give your class when teaching a specific topic. This website is great for everything from getting your students to create scenes from the novel they are studying, to creating situations in the science lab where they need to practice safety. This website seems to be very versitile, and is a resource that students will enjoy useing, and is accomodating to multiple learning styles. I think bringing graphic novels into the classroom is a great strategy and is something that will improve student performance.

Source:
Gavigan, K. (2011). More powerful than a locomotive: Using graphic novels to motivate struggling male adolescent readers. Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults, 1(3).