Formal Blog task 3

There are many views on whether comics and graphic novels within the Primary Literacy curriculum offer opportunities for children to learn. The Department for Education and Skills (2006), state that children should be exploring how writers use language for comic and dramatic effects in year 5. This shows how important it is that children have access to reading comics and novels.

 

Comics and graphic novels are accessible to most children including those with reading and writing difficulties as well as developing children's vocabulary. However, Millard and Marsh (2001) argue that colloquial language used in comics distress a high percentage of parents. On the other hand, some individuals may argue that children need to be made aware of contractions used, as comics mainly include speech. I have seen children in schools choosing comics to read due to the amount of words and images that look more appetising than a thick book. This is because some children have a negative view on reading and find it boring, which promotes graphic novels as a way of motivating children to read (Crawford and Weiner, not dated). Stafford (2009) puts forward the idea of introducing children to comics as a class, discussing what they know about them already and comparing it to a normal book. This helps improve children's attitudes towards comics and graphic novels, as some children on my school experience did not read comics because they believed they were too easy. This view is understandable, although should be approached by a teacher to try and change their thoughts as it is good to have a variety of resources,  as all children learn in different ways. Comics include both images and text, which helps children's comprehension skills improve, as they can independently work out what is going on by using the images (Frey and Fisher, 208). Frey and Fisher (2008) claim that the visual clues in comics can encourage children to read more, giving them a positive reading experience and is a fun way to make links between images and words.

 

Stafford (2009) stresses how important it is that the content of comics used are appropriate to the age range due to the art work or language used. This needs to be approved by the teacher to save any problems in the future.  Nevertheless, Burg (as cited in Frey and Fisher, 2008) states an implication to using comics, is that words are reduced to minimum dialogue and images are restricted to a limited amount of cells on each page. Some parents believe that graphic novels are a bad influence on children and are used to motivate the reluctant readers (Crawford and Weiner, not dated).

 

I have not seen comics and graphic novels being promoted in schools, I would like to incorporate this into a lesson using the software to create comics. This would help teach story structure in Literacy to give children another mode of text to help with clearer understanding.

 

Crawford, P. & Weiner, S. (not dated) Using graphic novels with children and teens. A guide for Teachers and Librarians. [pdf] Available at: http://www.scholastic.com/graphix/Scholastic_BoneDiscussion.pdf (Accessed: 20/02/14)

 

Department for Education and Skills. (2006) Primary Framework for literacy and mathematics. [pdf] Available from: http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/pdfs/2006-primary-national-strategy.pdf (Accessed: 20/02/14).

 

Frey, N.E. & Fisher, D.B. (2008) Teaching Visual Literacy. London:Sage

 

Millard and Marsh (2001) 'Sending Minnie the Minx Home: comics and reading choices.' Cambridge Journal of Education, 31:1, 25 - 38 (pdf)

 

Stafford, T (2009) ‘Teaching Comics’ in Duncan, D. (2009) Teaching Children’s Literature: Making stories work in the classroom. Abingdon:Routledge (pdf)