Day 176 (of 2024/25) #booktok a history of comics in the classroom…and library
Year one. Stash of comics in library. Reading them and sharing them. Coming out of university where one of my education papers was “Comics to Classics” a look at scaffolding comics to get into more traditional literatures.
Year three. Small stack of comics on the classroom desk. A collection that I did not mind if they got ripped or were “well loved”
Year five. Station based learning – focus on a unit of study about “writing/drawing comics” in both classroom and library. Stack evolved into a bin – my favourite part was seeing students do a search and start to thumb through the first pages before they got back to their seat (I know..L walking during silent reading time!)
Year 8. Incorporating more shares of anthologies… Garfields… Calvin & Hobbes… Far Side… exploring Dav Pilkey (DogMan is a force, but I once dressed up as Captain Underpants!)
VP. (Tried blending the library but staff needed a 1.0 vp so I became a mentor) Buying graphic novels for library and explaining how they are good reading materials.
Year 15. Explored the writing and sharing of Jarrett Lerner: https://jarrettlerner.com
Principal librarian. Comics to explore, Graphic Novels to sign out (still helping others see value of reading)
Principal without a library – comic book exclusives – only comic books … ideally the ones that you can’t easily find on the gift store bookshelves on the ferries…
Why – missing link in joy of reading. I think we move to Fountas and Pinnell backline readers too quickly… I think we need some of the quirky readings that comic books enable…
Now: comic con… why didn’t I think of this for an end-of-year activity?
With a group of resistant learners, tried a focus on comics -and started with one-pagers to build sense of story. Took time, but got to independent reading time part of the day…
Comic Origin Stories:
PDFs:
Technolandy 
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