Educators in Baltimore, Maryland teamed up with Disney Publishing Worldwide educational division to create lessons based on comic books, according to a recent CNN.com story. Disney took Maryland’s state reading standards and adapted lesson plans and comic books to match, addressing such learning points like plot and character. The program was piloted in eight third-grade Baltimore classrooms.
I say good job to Baltimore and Disney. I agree with the critics that comic book or graphic novel reading should not replace other, more important reading, but getting kids to read anything developmentally appropriate is always a positive. If a third-grader does not understand plot and character but can learn these important concepts from a comic book, I think that is fantastic. When you are dealing with a classroom full of students, they are not going to want to read all the same things, and it is much more likely they will read something that interests them. Today that may be comic books, and perhaps tomorrow text books, newspapers, novels, etc.
Comic books certainly fit the differentiated philosophy and are definitely another way to motivate children to read. That’s why Reading A–Z now has comic books aimed at emerging readers. Most importantly, teachers and students love them.
I'm a special ed teacher in a program with kids who have serious behavior and learning problems as well as negative attitudes towards school. Graphic novels got one of my students reading. He likes to draw and write and had never seen a graphic novel. He was more than willing to create questions for someone else to answer after reading a graphic novel he chose from a selection of 5. He was requried to write 5 ?'s each that began with: who, when, where, why, what, how. I then had him orally answer his own questions to me.