It’s Elementary! Graphic Novels for the K–6 Classroom” by William H. Teale

        In “It’s Elementary! Graphic Novels for the K–6 Classroom” by William H. Teale, he states “graphic novels may be a ‘way in’ for helping children who are difficult to reach through traditional print text.” With schools and textbooks all presenting the traditional printed text format, its no wonder many struggles in class when it comes to reading. I kept hearing in my literature classes how graphic novels are able to help to get students to read and that they gather as much content as traditional text despite less words because of the imagery. In fact I recall more comic book articles despite reading far less comics books as a child than all the literature books I ever read, and the main reason I recall the literature books was because of other influential issues such as the teachers version had a different ending than our student books that we were reading out load.

Teale suggests 2 ways to use graphic novels  within a classroom:

       1st  “As a source of independent reading that will help children develop word recognition, fluency, and comprehension skills.”

        2nd  “As reading material for lessons in reading/language arts and social studies.” (I would include science as well)

As a lesson I see graphic novels as a support to for struggling students who are having difficulty trying to comprehend science through traditional printed text.  They “have rich themes and characterization that provide plenty of opportunities for children to explore and connect to their lives.”

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There are certainly issues that graphic novels pose in the classroom.  First, “it may be necessary to help children learn how to understand the ‘grammar’ of the panels in a graphic novel.” Especially since graphic novel tells much of the story through the pictures rather than through words. The level of the text may include vocabulary that stretches the reader beyond what may at first appear to be difficult, but the graphics draw upon the meaning enabling students a way of defining the words. Other issues that may appear in graphic novels is content. Many may contain adult themes and content not suitable for the classroom. So review is required before introduction into the classroom. Authors and publishers are now seeing the benefits of graphic novels and school libraries are now stocking many of these books for both literature reading and as a way of learning about history such as Butzer’s “Gettysburg: The Graphic Novel”.
 

Imagery has its place in education, One can not fix a car by reading alone, you need to see what it is they are explaining in order to know a the difference between carburetor from a spark plug. Graphic novels incorporate the imagery as part of the literature enabling the reader to read more using less words. Struggling students may be more capable of remembering content from graphic novels making it more useful for teachers to educate using this media. “We would not recommend a steady diet of GNs for guided reading, but there is no reason why they could not occasionally be used to add variety to guided-reading materials” But when you have a students struggling with a subject, I would recommend that if a suitable graphic novel is available, to try it. It might just be the “way in” for helping.