The Graphic Novel Classroom
POWerful Teaching and Learning With Images
- Maureen Bakis - Masconomet Regional School District, Topsfield, MA
Foreword by James Bucky Carter
A secret weapon for engaging adolescents
Could you use a superhero to teach reading, writing, critical thinking, and problem solving? While seeking the answer, secondary language arts teacher Maureen Bakis discovered a powerful pedagogy that teaches those skills and more. The amazingly successful results prompted her to write this practical guide that shows middle and high school teachers how to incorporate graphic novels into their classrooms in order to:
- Teach 21st century skills, including interpretation of content and form
- Promote authentic literacy learning
- Grow learners' competency in writing and visual comprehension
- Motivate students to create in multiple formats, including images
- Engage struggling as well as proficient students in reading
This comprehensive resource includes teaching and learning models, text-specific detailed lesson units, and examples of student work. If you are looking for an effective, contemporary way to jump-start learning and inspire students to love reading, The Graphic Novel Classroom is the superpower you need!
"There may be other books that promote the use of graphic novels, but none that are so specific or offer such concrete, user-friendly lessons. I really enjoyed reading this book—and now I want to read and teach some of these graphic novels."
"This book shows without a doubt how a graphic novel can foster deep thinking, vibrant discussion and multiple opportunities for writing with a purpose."
"This book provides a great framework for structuring a graphic novel English language arts class. The practical rationales for using these texts, as well as the activities included, do meet the need for a book aimed at ELA in instruction with graphic novels."
"This book is very readable and makes a clear case for using graphic novels. More importantly, it provides readers with examples that they can use in their classrooms. It’s very practical, yet challenging."
"Even if you don’t want to (or can’t) teach graphic novels, this book offers so many wonderful ideas adaptable to other texts about how to get students thinking about what they read."
"High school English teacher and graphic novel advocate Maureen Bakis offers educators a guide for using comics as teaching tools, based on her own experience. She examines the compositional elements of comics using several volumes as examples and demonstrates how they can be used to teach different concepts and skills."
'This informative teacher's guide demonstrates how McCloud's Understanding Comics can be utilized in class and offers tried-and-tested ideas for the classroom, taking select graphic novels as an example'
The book will be used in a fall 2014 course for pre-services teachers. The text will be used to explore the various ways that graphic novels can be used in the classroom.
y course is so overloaded as it is I cannot ask for students to adopt another full text (though I found it to be excellent!)
We need a nonprint media literacy class. This would be perfect for that.
