Week 3- Comics and Graphic Novels

During our seminar we discussed the merits of comics and graphic novels within the classroom to support and develop primary literacy. We were able to identify several benefits for utilising comics and graphic novels to enhance children’s literacy experience, these consisted of: developing the opportunity to introduce children to meta-language  enabling them to talk about multimodal texts; additionally this medium is often very visual allowing the children to follow the story through pictures not just the text. Although Moss G (1999) argues that children may use visual text as a means of escaping the hard work involved in reading continuous prose. Lambirth A (2003) disagrees with this point stating that popular cultural texts like comics can ‘capture’ the interests of children, to enable teachers to introduce texts that are part of the curriculum.

During the session we were given the opportunity to look at a variety of comic/ graphic novels; one particularly graphic novel that stood out to me was ‘The Hitchhiker’. The use of pictures within the story were very graphic and unsuitable for young children, many were presenting images of blood splatter, the death of family members and generally dark and violent themes, that even I found disturbing.  I felt this emphasised the importance of making sure that all comic/graphic novels are age appropriate and therefore suitable for the children within a class.

Lambirth A (2003) goes on to say that comics can empower readers in society and should be valued and understood by teachers.  However, Millard and Marsh (2001) challenged this view; stating that comic books could be held accountable for the growth in juvenile delinquency. This is illustrated through the use of graphic accounts of visual horrors and acts of violence contained in comic book texts.  They go on to say that it is a gross commercial exploitation of children’s interests.

Despite this Millard and Marsh (2001) were aware that some popular comics (Beano and Dandy) were based around knock-about humour and were very child centred. They observed that these comics were focussed upon: school experiences, friendships and brushes with minor figures of authority from a child’s viewpoint. This signifies that comic books can have a lasting place within the classroom environment without exposing children to negative factors or adversely affecting their reading ability. According to Millard and Marsh (2001) these comic books are still rarely found on classroom shelves. Lewis D (1996) comments that teachers often feel comic books are inferior due to the interaction of image and text- it is their drawings which predominate and define the genre.

During some research carried out during the 1990’s Millard and Marsh (2001), collected teachers views on the use of comic books; the results demonstrated positive responses. According to Millard and Marsh (2001) one teacher suggested that work on comics was beneficial because it was helping children to read both print and visual elements, another teacher said they incorporated work based on comic characters and the linguistic features of comics into  their literacy curriculum.

The DfES (2013) clearly states that all pupils must be encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading. Worthy et al (1999) asserts that there is an ever increasing gap between student preferences and materials that schools provide and recommend.

In the second part of the seminar we explored the app Comic Life; this enabled us to create our very own comic strip. Our comic was based around ‘super shapes’, we took pictures of shapes found in our surrounding area (heart shape leaves, church spire) and created adventures for the shapes; this is something children would be able to do instead of writing a traditional story. A methodology that incorporates technology into literacy lessons, making it more enjoyable, engaging and interactive for the children. Unfortunately, one challenge we discovered whilst using the Comic Life app, was the enormous amount of time consumed in the creation of the comic strip; (moving boxes and speech bubbles; ensuring they were in the right order, making sure the story made sense) from a technological point of view the children would require a thorough understanding of the process, in order for the teacher to fully utilise this educational tool within a classroom environment.






























 

 

Bibliography

DfE, (2013), Computing: Programmes of Study, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-computing-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-computing-programmes-of-study

 

Lambirth, A. (2003) ‘”They get enough of that at home”: Understanding aversion to popular cultures in schools’ Reading 37(1) pp.9-13 (pdf on LN)

Lewis D. (1996) Pop-ups and fingle-fangles: the history of the picture book, in V. Watson & M. Styles (Eds) Talking Pictures: pictorial texts and young readers (London: Routledge).

Millard and Marsh (2001) 'Sending Minnie the Minx Home: comics and reading choices' Cambridge Journal of Education, 31:1, 25 - 38 (pdf)

Moss G. (1999) Boys and non-fiction: cause or effect? Literacy Today, No21 p.19

Worthy J, Moorman M & Turner M, (1999) What Johnny likes to read is hard to find in school, Reading Research Quarterly, 34 p12-27.