This week I address:
Media Literacy 3.3 Conventions and Techniques; Reading 2. Understanding Form and Style
The comic and graphic novel genres have specific codes and conventions, just as text-based language does. Exclamation, question, and declaration (spoken, whispered) are clearly identified through the use of speech bubbles and formats that are as widely known as quotation, exclamation and question marks, and periods. Bitstrips defines these bubbles clearly for the student. A number of shared activities could be designed, such as create a comic with different speech bubbles and have an elbow partner fill in the text, or match different texts with the appropriate bubble.
Another important feature of panel writing is the space between the panels, called the gutter. The gutter can indicate the passage of time and indeed graphic novelists such as Scott McCloud will be very deliberate when deciding how large the space will be.
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! Reading 1.5 Making Inferences/Interpreting Texts
Another use of the gutters is for making inferences or predicting. Students can infer what has taken place to move the story from panel to panel, predict what will happen in the next panel or fill in missing panels. Working in small groups, students could storyboard a strip and then leave out a panel for other students to fill in. Comic Life allows the ultimate manipulation of gutters.
For a detailed description of the codes and conventions of the comic genre, plus over 40 activities, check out “In Graphic Detail” by David Booth and Kathleen Lundy.
Hello Barbara,
ReplyDeleteIt is as if we could have been working at the same table this week!
It looked like this: 4 teachers - One literacy partner, two intermediate teachers and me. Our task was to use Terry Thompson's chapter on "Inferring using Graphica" to create a 3 week plan for deconstructing and constructing graphic text using Comic Life. To say the afternoon went well, would be an understatement.
From comments like, "What's a gutter?" to the realization that there are at least 5 different ways to infer meaning from graphic text, it was, as you and I would both say, "A blast"
So thank you for blogging about your successes here, Barbara. It is great to know that we could have been talking about the same things at the same time this week, only 2.5 hours apart!
Hope to have a good talk with you about Graphica at #ecoo2011.
See you then.
Kent
Hi Kent,
ReplyDeleteSounds like a rich task. This stuff just oozes Critical Thinking and Inquiry questions.
I really like the construct/deconstruct aspect as way to have students (and teachers!) make meaning of the writing form. The gutter ahah moment is always powerful.
I'll drill deeper into the inferencing reference with Thomson's book. Thanks for steering me that way.
BTW I am working in the same triad here, Literacy coach, teacher, moi. It's great to have, and know of, that commonality throughout the districts.
See ya!
Barb
Ok, now I need to sit down and talk to BOTH of you. Great ideas.
ReplyDeleteReally i appreciate the effort you made to share the knowledge.The topic here i found was really effective to the topic which i was researching for a long time
ReplyDeletephoto retouches