Comic Mania – 2nd through 5th grade

March 25, 2022May 14, 2022

COllaborative comics!

For this activity, the kids worked in stages of development. They played a game where they had to put a cut up Calvin and Hobbes comic back in an order that made sense to them in order to tell a story. I also had them do warm ups at the beginning of class where they had to draw a cell (a comic panel) that either came before or after the image.

Then, I had them choose one of three pre-given characters to research in a comic book a panel of choice or at random. They worked in groups to make a short comic which each other’s panel in a way that made a narrative.

After this, they created a character and we watched Faith Ringgold’s reading of Tar Beach.
This helped them think about designing their character’s superpowers. For more inspiration, we also looked at Roger Shimomura’s, Super Buddahead. Then we chatted about the parts of a story and problem to be solved. Working in teams, they then developed their panels, after going over what components of panels could be used.