It was getting pretty late and I was down to the wire while writing a lesson plan for the following day’s class on Ancient Mesopotamia. The idea to assign the classes to draw a comic came quite naturally after staring at a series of reliefs of the royal Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal and a Sumerian bird-headed man. I knew a story was hidden beneath the mythical creatures and beasts—and I wanted to see it expressed in comic form.
The following morning, I prepped the lesson by cutting pieces of computer paper lengthwise (the same way I used to prepare Bristol paper). And I gave some useful tips like using a light blue pen or colored pencil or a very light pencil make it easier before inking with black. As an incentive, I rewarded any completed comics the opportunity to display their finished comic strip on the overhead projector for the whole class to see.
Comic strips are understood and accepted for a very large and universal audience. The ability to flesh out a complete comic strip under a tight schedule is a rare skillset. A very small percentage of the comics submitted had illustrations, writing, and a story plot that met all the required elements of comedy with a natural flow.
I was pleasantly delighted at the final comic strips produced at the end of the lesson. The bravery for most creators to show their final work with the entire class also correlated with the total time and attention to detail spent on the final project.
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Incorporating Comic Strips into a World History Lesson Plan
kawaiidaigakusei at 12:00AM, Oct. 25, 2021
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kawaiidaigakusei at 7:25AM, Oct. 26, 2021
Make them draw comics for a lesson plan! The ideas and art they come up with are so original.
PaulEberhardt at 10:51AM, Oct. 25, 2021
Oh, right! Also, I've used a comic about shifting cultivation in Geography several years in a row now. Just a lucky find in this case, which I've always been planning to redraw myself but have never done. However, I usually don't find many opportunities for including comics in Geography, because there's always a very tight schedule.
PaulEberhardt at 10:50AM, Oct. 25, 2021
Awesome idea, especially since it worked out so well! I try this kind of thing in my ESL classes every once in a while, but it always depends on finding the right topic for the right class and having enough term time. Unfortunately, my current students don't like drawing at all, not even when I'm not looking - no idea what's wrong with those kids! In the past, at a different school, a class of mine had great fun drawing cartoons of, for example, "they're hitting each other" and "they're hitting themselves" (and others) to help them tell the difference between "them", "themselves" and "each other" (all of which may translate as the same word "sich" in German). Some still wrote "they're enjoying each other" in the test, but possibly fewer than there might have been. Next time an advanced class of mine gets stories as a topic, I'll probably have a go at making them do a comic or perhaps a kind of film storyboard. I haven't really decided yet, but your post has just encouraged me a bit.