![\"FarSideComic\"](\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/files\/2016\/06\/FarSideComic.jpg\")
The Far Side \u00a9 Gary Larson<\/p><\/div>\n
You may have laughed at the second version; I doubt you did at the first. In order for this story to function as intended\u2014to evoke an immediate response\u2014the narrative must be delivered instantaneously and the tone must be unmistakable. In this case, a drawing can accomplish this where words do not.<\/p>\n
Through much of our history, the written has enjoyed primacy over the visual\u2014and for compelling reasons. There is a specificity and precision to words that images cannot match. However, with the ubiquity of the internet\u2014which is after all essentially an enormous system of words and pictures\u2014I think we are beginning to realize that pictures (and in the case of comics, my field of study: words combined with pictures<\/em>) can be powerful communicators of certain types of information.<\/p>\n This certainly isn\u2019t wholly new. When important information needs to be communicated directly, clearly, and immediately, often pictures (or sequences of pictures) are employed. In the classroom, the word\/picture combination we\u2019re most likely to encounter is, of course, comics. Children\u2019s and \u201call ages\u201d comics have experienced a tremendous boom in the last decade or so and I\u2019d be surprised if many K-12 teachers aren\u2019t at least passingly familiar with books like Smile<\/em>, Bone<\/em>, Awkward<\/em>, and Babymouse<\/em>.<\/p>\n Past generations have seen comics as a \u201clower\u201d form of reading than pure prose and have often sought to excise it from the classroom. In today\u2019s classroom, though, I encourage teachers to embrace comics and recognize that it\u2019s simply a different<\/em> mode of reading\u2014a mode with its own complex grammar, a type of literature that imparts information in a way that\u2019s simply different <\/em>than pure prose.<\/p>\n Can comics serve as a \u201cgateway\u201d for reluctant readers to eventually embrace prose reading? Sure. But a gateway<\/em> is something we move through and then leave behind. In my experience, students who embrace comics initially continue<\/em> to read comics as they add prose reading to their palette. Why should we view the two as mutually exclusive\u2014one a stepping stone and the other our end goal?<\/p>\n And of course, there\u2019s also a world of amazing classroom activities centered on making<\/em> comics. Children love to draw. Comics have the ability to harness that love of drawing.\u00a0Consider activities like making a comics autobiography or short memoir story, researching and drawing a comic book biography of a favorite historical figure, or make a comics adaptation of a chapter of a favorite prose book.<\/p>\n The children currently populating our classrooms have grown up in a ubiquity of word\/picture combinations. Let\u2019s embrace this and put it to good use by using comics\u2014both reading<\/em> comics and creating<\/em> comics\u2014in our classrooms.<\/p>\n Ben Towle leading a teacher comic workshop at the Joan Oates Institute in 2016<\/p><\/div>\n This guest post was written by teaching artist Ben Towle<\/a>, a four-time Eisner-nominated cartoonist. Ben has taught educators at the Partners in the Arts Joan Oates Institute<\/a>. View his work on Instagram<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here is a story: Many years ago, there was a trapper. He was interested in trapping a beaver so that he could sell its pelt, so he purchased a beaver trap. He set off into the woods with the trap, found a likely spot by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2589,"featured_media":1816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[222836],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-community-partner-spotlights","9":"post-with-thumbnail","10":"post-with-thumbnail-large"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/files\/2016\/06\/Comic_feature.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1034"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1529,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions\/1529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"AirplaneComic\"](\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/files\/2016\/06\/AirplaneComic.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/pia\/files\/2016\/06\/IMG_4943.jpg\")