Making comics - teaching demonstration

This videos shows children’s creation of narratives.

Building upon children’s prior experience with reading comic books, the educator encourages children to create their own story, through drawings across six comic strip boxes. Afterwards, the educator asks each child to retell their narrative, while the educator captures their words, written underneath each picture.

Watch the video on Vimeo : Making comics - creating visual narratives

Reflective practice

Observe

The educator’s introduction and explanation of the comic strip text type with the children.
The children’s imaginative creation of characters, settings, plot, and resolutions in their comics.
The individual progression of each child’s story, and the educator’s intermittent “checking in” with each child as they work.
Children’s previous artwork and written pieces displayed in the room.

Reflection questions

What scaffolding questions does the educator use to support each child’s drawing of their story?
How could this experience be adapted in your setting using some of the children’s favourite kinds of book as a stimulus?
The educator first introduced comic writing on particular themes (e.g. sustainability). What themes could you incorporate in some shared drawing/writing experiences with children in your setting?
What evidence of children’s learning did you notice?
What would you plan next to consolidate or extend children’s learning?

In your team, discuss how you would role-model capturing children’s stories including handwriting font.

Learning experience plan

This learning experience plan relates to:

integrated language and literacy experience
language and emergent literacy learners (36 - 60 months)
learning foci: making meaning and expressing ideas (emergent literacy), exploring and creating texts, stories and narratives
teaching practice: writing with children.

Links to VEYLDF

Outcome 5: communication

Children engage with a range of texts and get meaning from these texts:

actively use, engage with and share the enjoyment of language and texts in a range of ways

Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media:

use the creative arts, such as drawing, painting, sculpture, drama, dance, movement, music and story-telling, to express ideas and make
begin to use images and approximations of letters and words to convey meaning.

Children use information and communication technologies to access information, investigate ideas and represent their thinking:

use information and communications technologies as tools for designing, drawing, editing, reflecting and composing.

Victorian Curriculum Levels Levels F-2: Language

Understand the use of vocabulary in familiar contexts related to everyday experiences, personal interests and topics taught at school.

Learning intentions

Developing children’s creation of texts using a series of sequential images.
Developing children’s awareness of story elements.

Assessment of learning

This is demonstrated when children:

draw a series of images within the comic strip that tell a story
retell their story (including the setting, characters, plot, and resolution).

Resources

Example of comic to illustrate how a comic works
Paper with six boxes for images, and smaller boxes underneath for the written words
Pens, pencils or other writing implements

Group size

Individuals or small group (2-5 children).

Experience process

Before the experience

Engage children in reading experiences using comic books, to allow them to explore how authors/illustrators create meaning using a combination of images and print.

Introduce the experience and show the example comic strip:
- describe the features of the text, including images moving left to right, top to bottom
- the accompanying text underneath.
Encourage children to draw the images in a sequential fashion, so they can tell their story from image to image:
- children can create a drawing about any theme or character
- educators can provide scaffolding to help children to create images that flow from one to the other.
Spend time individually with each child so they can explain their story across the six comic strip boxes:
- write down their story word-for-word on the strip itself, or if preferred on a separate page to accompany the comic strip.

Going further

This experience can be extended by creating collaborative stories where a group of children work together to create a separate image each, and then tell the story one child and image at a time.

Additional and alternate resources

This experience can be adapted to consist of smaller comic strips (e.g. 2-4 boxes for images).

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