Shortlisted for the UK Literacy Association's Academic Book Award 2021 There is an increasing trend in teachers using graphic novels to get their students excited about reading and writing, using both original stories and adaptations of classic works by authors such as Homer, Shakespeare, and the Brontes. However, there is surprisingly little research available about which pedagogies and classroom practices are proven to be effective. This book draws on cutting-edge research, surveys and classroom observations to provide a set of effective methods for teaching with graphic novels in the secondary English language arts classroom. These methods can be applied to a broad base of uses ranging from understanding literary criticism, critical reading, multimodal composition, to learning literary devices like foreshadowing and irony. The book begins by looking at what English language arts teachers hope to achieve in the classroom. It then considers the affordances and constraints of using graphic novels to achieve these specific goals, using some of the most successful graphic novels as examples, including Maus; Persepolis; The Nameless City; and American Born Chinese and series such as Manga Shakespeare. Finally, it helps the teacher navigate through the planning process to figure out how to best use graphic novels in their own classroom. Drawing on their extensive teaching experience, the authors offer examples from real classrooms, suggested lesson plans, and a list of teachable graphic novels organized by purpose of teaching.

Harness the power of graphic novels to promote literacy and engage all secondary students with Teaching Graphic Novels by Katie Monnin! Address print-text and image literacies, from navigating text features to creating standards-based lessons on reading comprehension, fiction/nonfiction, written response, critical thinking, and media literacy. Complete with examples from graphic novels, professional resource suggestions, strategies that can be used with any graphic novel, cross-indexes of middle and high school graphic novels and themes, reproducibles, and extra support for English-language learners. Teaching Graphic Novels was a finalist for both the 2009 ForeWord Education Book of the Year and the 2010 AEP Distinguished Achievement Award in the 6-8 Curriculum and Instruction category!

Secondary language arts teacher Maureen Bakis shows how to engage adolescents by using graphic novels to teach 21st-century skills, improve reading comprehension, and promote literacy learning.

Since todays young readers live in a highly visual world, its no surprise that graphic novels are growing in popularity. With this book, teachers can lead students in literary analysis of this unique genre, introduce them to good quality graphic novels, and encourage them to write and illustrate a graphic short story. Each lesson in the book is based on standards.

A collection of nine essays that describes strategies for teaching visual literacy by using graphic novels, comics, anime, political cartoons, and picture books.

Presents practical suggestions for pairing a graphic novel with a traditional text or examining connections between multiple sources.

Use graphic novels to teach visual and verbal literacy While our kids today are communicating outside the classroom in abbreviated text bursts with visual icons, teachers are required to teach them to critically listen, think, and read and write complex texts. Graphic novels are a uniquely poised vehicle we can use to bridge this dissonance between student communication skills and preferences with mandated educational goals. Worth a Thousand Words details how and why graphic novels are complex texts with advanced-level vocabulary, and demonstrates how to read and analyze these texts. It includes practical advice on how to integrate these books into both ELA and content-area classrooms and provides an extensive list of appropriate graphic novels for K-8 students, lesson suggestions, paired graphic/prose reading suggestions, and additional resources for taking these texts further. Provides research to back up why graphic novels are such powerful educational tools Helps you engage diverse student learners with exciting texts Shows you how to make lessons more meaningful Offers advice on implementing new literary mediums into your classroom Perfect for parents and teachers in grades K-8, Worth a Thousand Words opens up an exciting new world for teaching children visual and verbal literacy.

Comic books and graphic novels, known collectively as "graphica," have long been popular with teenagers and adults. Recently graphica has grown in popularity with younger readers as well, motivating and engaging some of our most reluctant readers who often shun traditional texts. While some teachers have become curious about graphica's potential, many are confused by the overwhelming number of new titles and series, in both fiction and nonfiction, and are unsure of its suitability and function in their classrooms. Drawing on his own success using graphica with elementary students, literacy coach Terry Thompson introduces reading teachers to this popular medium and suggests sources of appropriate graphica for the classroom and for particular students. Taking cues from research that supports the use of graphica with students, Terry shows how this exciting medium fits into the literacy framework and correlates with best practices in comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency instruction. Adventures in Graphica contains numerous, easy-to-replicate, instructional strategies, including examples of how graphic texts can be used to create a bridge as students transfer abstract comprehension strategies learned through comics and graphic novels to traditional texts. Adventures in Graphica provides a roadmap for teachers to the medium that the New York Times recently hailed as possibly "the next new literary form."

Paige Turner has just moved to New York with her family, and she's having some trouble adjusting to the big city. In the pages of her sketchbook, she tries to make sense of her new life, including trying out her secret identity: artist. As she makes friends and starts to explore the city, she slowly brings her secret identity out into the open, a process that is equal parts terrifying and rewarding. Laura Lee Gulledge crafts stories and panels with images that are thought-provoking, funny, and emotionally resonant. Teens struggling to find their place can see themselves in Paige's honest, heartfelt story. Praise for Page by Paige “Gulledge's b&w illustrations are simple but well-suited to their subject matter; the work as a whole is a good-natured, optimistic portrait of a young woman evolving toward adulthood.” –Publishers Weekly

A New York Times Best Illustrated Book Hélène has been inexplicably ostracized by the girls who were once her friends. Her school life is full of whispers and lies - Hélène weighs 216; she smells like BO. Her loving mother is too tired to be any help. Fortunately, Hélène has one consolation, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Hélène identifies strongly with Jane's tribulations, and when she is lost in the pages of this wonderful book, she is able to ignore her tormentors. But when Hélène is humiliated on a class trip in front of her entire grade, she needs more than a fictional character to see herself as a person deserving of laughter and friendship. Leaving the outcasts' tent one night, Hélène encounters a fox, a beautiful creature with whom she shares a moment of connection. But when Suzanne Lipsky frightens the fox away, insisting that it must be rabid, Hélène's despair becomes even more pronounced: now she believes that only a diseased and dangerous creature would ever voluntarily approach her. But then a new girl joins the outcasts' circle, Géraldine, who does not even appear to notice that she is in danger of becoming an outcast herself. And before long Hélène realizes that the less time she spends worrying about what the other girls say is wrong with her, the more able she is to believe that there is nothing wrong at all. This emotionally honest and visually stunning graphic novel reveals the casual brutality of which children are capable, but also assures readers that redemption can be found through connecting with another, whether the other is a friend, a fictional character or even, amazingly, a fox.