A Ready to Use Comic Strip Lesson Plan

After posting the Using GIF Images in Classroom with Phil, we kept on talking about the useful things we were doing in class and when I said that we would be a good team, he said why not? 🙂

So, I’m very happy to introduce you to TeachAboo’s first co-writer Phil Calogeridis.

And this is his first blog post. 

Thank you Phil and Welcome! 🙂 A Comic Strip Lesson Plan Sample Using Pixton.com I suppose there are many ways to use comics as a class project. This is for a writing project. One way is to buy a comic book, remove some consecutive pages and erase with correct fluid captions titles and text. You can photocopy the original pages and give one photocopy to each student. Then ask them to complete their page by coming up with their own captions, individually. Finally, when they are done you put the pages in their original order and you have a new comic. It may be incoherent in terms of text, but this incoherence is what creates surprise and draws attention. As a follow up, a controlled speaking activity may be that the students, one after the other, can narrate their part of the story, in the original page order. (Many variations of this are possible).

Another way is to use an online comic creation software like the one I’ve used: www.pixton.com

Today’s lesson plan is about ‘Being Healthy’

Go Healthy

 1. Arousing and building up background knowledge:

Teacher elicits vocabulary related to foods. Actually, Teacher splits the board in two columns: one is healthy and the other unhealthy foods and drinks. (Food photos are used on the interactive whiteboard).

Then, students practice vocabulary related to ordering at a restaurant and act out the role play which you can download by clicking on the image below.

2. Comic Strip:

The story takes place at a restaurant and the plot is briefly as the following:

Three friends go to a restaurant. One of them is chubby and orders unhealthy food. The others persuade him to order healthy foods. In the end the chubby boy follows the advice of his friends and becomes thin and healthy.

How to Do it: The teacher creates the appropriate characters (fat and thin boy, his friends (boy and girl) and the waiter. The setting is a restaurant. The class equipment is a laptop for the teacher and an interactive whiteboard for the students. The teacher elicits from the students appropriate language and ideas using the plot as a starting point, and adds them to the comic.

The final comic cannot be downloaded since it’s the free version but you can press Ctrl+PrtSc (print screen) and paste on a paint software, like paint.net which is free, and then crop and save as JPEG.

@Yaseminislah: You can watch this short video (10 min is not that long come on! 🙂 to learn more about pixton. I tried to follow the steps Phil described in his lesson plan.

 

Here is the one Phil created with his students, you should read it, funny 🙂 I can’t imagine how much fun they’ve had during this activity!

You can also have a look at these websites for more about using comic strips in the classroom:

21 Ways to Use Comics in Classroom

Using Cartoons and Comic Strips

26 Ways to Use Comics in Classroom and 5 Free Tools for Creating Comics 

How to Use Comic Strip Making Websites to Enhance Your Teaching 

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