hey all. I'm looking for ideas about teaching a graphic novel... not in the sense that I need lesson plans, etc. I've got great materials. I'm talking about the actual reading of the text. Unfortunately, my department was only able to afford to get classroom sets... meaning <40 copies per teacher. For teachers with one class, that's fine. However, some have multiple classes studying the book. This means, that we'll have to do all of our reading in class. How can we read this successfully in class? They don't work well independently, unfortunately... so should we read it aloud somehow, or assign parts for people to speak as if it were a play? Something else? Any ideas?
I think reading it as a play could work well. Assigning parts. I guess it also depends on which type of graphic novel it is and what grade you are teaching. Because of an introduction he did I know that William Savage a professor at Northwestern University teaches the graphic novel 100 Bullets in a class about Crime and Punishment in literature. I dunno if they actually read it in class or just discuss it. You could look for his e-mail in the Northwestern site and ask him or something.
What about in small groups? That way they could act/speak parts among themselves in a small setting, keeping everyone active in reading it. Just a thought. Is there anyway there could be a 'rotation' for when the book is used? Do all the classes need to be reading it at the same exact time? I wish I could be of more help. It's been a while since I've been in school.
You might be surprised at how well the students can read silently in class. You could divide them into small groups or partnerships. Then have the students read for 10 minutes at a time, then they stop to talk with their partner about what they just read for a few minutes. You can give them specific prompts to start the conversation. My 6th graders need lots of control, so I assign each partner a letter, A or B. Then when I stop them to talk, I give explicit instructions about which partner is to talk when. Knowing that they will have to talk about the book forces them to actually read it.
Aw, man, I thought that this thread was going to be about Lady Chatterly's Lover or Lolita or something.
A couple of questions for you. How old are your students? In your teaching are you focusing on the writing or the art or mixing the two? What graphic novels are you using?
First, thanks for the responses everyone. I'm teaching some relatively low-level seniors. We're studying Maus I and Maus II as a single literary work... a novel.
No, this is a lit class. In truth, we usually read Night for a Holocaust unit. Somehow, it was put into the American Lit curriculum two years ago. Our seniors have all read it... so we wanted to choose something else. We chose Maus as a replacement... and I think it might end up permanent. We're enjoying it. That said, I would argue your apparent assertion that this is not a "real" book. There is not a single standard (that we are supposed to be addressing at this point in the curriculum) that is not being met through the reading of this graphic novel instead of a full text book. It is full of literary devices, critical thinking opportunities, plot and character development. We are approaching this reading with the same intensity that we do any other piece of literature.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's awesome that you have the flexibillity and imagination to teach kids things that aren't the normal traditional literary classics. That's what makes good teachers great. And in this case, teaching the kids that comic books can be read as real books is great.
I just taught Persepolis in a college class, and it worked out very well. Half the students mentioned they were asking for the sequels on the Xmas lists. Some also were ordering Maus, which is often referenced in critical discussions of Persepolis. Got some pretty insightful essays on imperialism, Iranian history, Islamic feminism, and Western pop culture influences in the Muslim world. Persepolis apparently was the "Common Reading" text at West Point this past year, btw. Which rocks.
That's nice to hear. It's a classic graphic novel. I have a friend studying at Yale who had to write a paper on Maus for a class called "Fiction and the Forms of Narrative". But she tells me that they didn't read in the classroom at all. They read on their own and later discussed it.