Category Archives: Classroom practice

Student work and teaching critical reading explicitly via comics

Posted on January 14, 2011 by

Every holiday season, our local alt-news weekly publication The Flagpole publishes a reader-submitted section to account for a week off.  The submissions are predictably an eclectic mix of writing: some worth reading, and some worth tossing.  Imagine my surprise a … Continue reading →

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Literary mashup: killing Shakespeare, or another form of appreciation?

Posted on January 13, 2011 by

Good art should provoke strong reactions.  So let’s start here: I am shaking my head. I want to cry. I want to bitch slap whoever was involved with creating it. However, this kind of crap is nothing new. There is … Continue reading →

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Another graphic organizer …

Posted on November 24, 2010 by

These are just easy response guides for memoir excerpts. I figured this would be preferable, easier to grade, and more fun than a set of 5-10 questions. These were made using Plasq’s Comic Life.

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A graphic graphic organizer

Posted on November 24, 2010 by

I’m sure I can do better, but feel free to steal/adapt … Additionally, what do people think?

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Coupling graphic memoir with the original text (and audio) using Geoffrey Canada’s Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun, illusrated by Jamar Nicholas

Posted on November 20, 2010 by

I just spent $200 out of my own pocket to order 20 copies of this text to use in the final few weeks of the semester. Why? Because Geoffrey Canada is purely awesome, and I think his memoir can serve … Continue reading →

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Illuminating America’s economic woes through parody and comics: The Adventures of Unemployed Man by Erich Origen and Gan Golan

Posted on November 20, 2010 by

In all honesty, Adam Smith isn’t particularly interesting to me. My high school economics textbook was Frank Herbert’s Dune (seriously – in addition to other student-centered projects), so it’s probably no wonder that I made a ‘C’ in ECON 2105 … Continue reading →

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What would John Dewey do?

Posted on November 16, 2010 by

I decided that my own butchered comic format would best make my point here.  I made this comic using Plasq’s ComicLife program. This quotation has always made perfect sense to me. It boils down to student engagement and not requiring … Continue reading →

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Deogratias: a Tale of Rwanda by J.P. Stassen — Integrating graphic texts with multimedia studies of nonfiction and memoir

Posted on November 10, 2010 by

One somewhat regrettable pleasure of teaching world literature is the opportunity to study historic events in more recent decades. Whereas publishers play catchup and curriculum writers should ideally revise social studies curricula annually (if not more often), literacy classrooms tied … Continue reading →

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Yummy: the Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri; illulstrated by Randy DuBurke

Posted on November 7, 2010 by

In the land of the free and the home of the brave, who is to blame when an eleven-year old boy born to an abusive, neglectful, drug-addicted prostitute kills a 14-year old girl as he aims at a rival in … Continue reading →

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Characterization: says, thinks, does …

Posted on October 26, 2010 by

I utilized this EASY to implement, quick, and simple formative assessment while reading Sharon Draper’s Forged by Fire with a group of often-reluctant 9th graders recently. I adapted the idea from Thompson’s Adventures in Graphica, which has proven to offer … Continue reading →

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