Comics+in+the+Classroom

From http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/12/10-ideas-for-using-comics-in-your.html#.WQDjk2nyuWU

=10 Ideas for Using Comics In Your Classroom - Best of 2016=

There is no shortage of tools for creating comics available to students. Regardless of which comic creation tool you choose to have students use, the ideas for using comics in your classroom are the same. Here are ten ways that your students can use comics in your classroom.

Rather than just writing about a book, have your students illustrate their favorite parts of a book. Let them create illustrations of characters as they pictured the characters while reading a book. The Giver is a perfect candidate for this kind of alternative book report.
 * 1. A fun alternative to traditional book reports.**

Another way to use comics for a book report is to have students illustrate an alternate ending to a favorite book. Or have them illustrate an epilogue to a book.

For a history lesson have students pick a famous person and illustrate significant moments in that person's life. The further back in history, the better because students will have to really start to use their imaginations to illustrate scenes of people for whom there are few portraits or photographs.
 * 2. Create biographies.**

Let students tell stories from their own lives in a comic setting.
 * 3. Create autobiographies.**

A variation on this idea is to have students depict themselves as the star of a superhero story.

Many comic creation tools let students use a mix of pictures and illustrations. Let your students use that combination to illustrate their goals for the school year, for an athletic season, or as a response to "where do you see yourself in five years?"
 * 4. Create goal or vision boards.**

In elementary school classrooms, you could have students create comics about appropriate recess behavior or lunchroom behavior. With older students, you might have them create a comic or storyboard about science lab safety concepts. A simple, one-frame comic tool like ToonyTool could be used by older students to create lab safety reminder signs.
 * 5. Illustrate procedures.**

Students of all ages can use comics to create summaries of an event like a political debate. Or you might have students create comics about historical events. Pixton offers some extensive lesson plans based on that idea.
 * 6. Summarize events.**

Creating timelines is a classic social studies lesson activity. Have students enhance their timelines by creating comic summaries of the events on their timelines. They could create the timeline entirely in a tool like Storyboard That or they could create their comics then print them to add to an existing timeline they created on paper.
 * 7. Craft a visual timeline of events.**

A lot of student struggle to write fiction stories when they're just given a blank document to write on. Comic creation tools often include lots of visuals that can help spark ideas in students' minds. Make Beliefs Comix offers a lot of fiction writing prompts for students.
 * 8. Write and illustrate fun fiction stories.**

Creating comics to illustrate the meaning of a vocabulary word is a fun alternative to simply writing definitions and studying flashcards.
 * 9. Illustrate concepts and or vocabulary terms.**

A lot of schools use the parent-teacher-student model for first quarter and first trimester conferences. Before your conferences have your students illustrate how they would like the conference to go and how to phrase the things that they would like to say during the conference.
 * 10. Model polite conversations.**

Storyboard That and Pixton both offer comprehensive lesson plans that incorporate the ideas listed above. Of course, you don't need to use those tools to create great comics. You could also use Google Slides to create comics as I demonstrated in this video. To create simple, single frame comics you could try a tool like ToonyTool. Or you might try Make Beliefs Comix for creating comics in multiple languages. Make Beliefs Comix also provides PDF comic templates that you can print for your students.
 * 5 Tools for Creating Comics**