Comics are Collaborative
Grade level 9, 10, 11, 12
The unit served as a cross-curriculum endeavor between the English, History and Marketing departments. Comics generated excitement and enthusiasm for learning as well engaged students in a manner that portrays them each as a superhero or super heroine of their own.
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Standards and Anchors
Objectives:
- Work collaboratively in groups to achieve consensus
- Select a topic from the Program of Study to apply competency in a new and novel way by creating a comic strip
- Use our textbooks to research and guide us to accurately portray the steps in the process
- Take pride in work
- Demonstrate preparedness
- Focus on task
Competency Task List – skills are selected by students
Modifications – extended time for reading individual and group activities, summary and evaluation. Para educator for assistance.
Essential Questions (depending on the competency selected, the EQ’s will vary by group):
- What is selling?
- What are the steps in the selling process?
- What are three customer services offered by retailers?
- What are the benefits of providing customer services?
- Identify three selling policies
- What are the steps to handling a customer’s objection?
Teaching strategies: Collaborative pairs, distributed guided practice, distributed summarizing, graphic organizers
Supplemental materials: Slide share, History of Comics
Learning assessments:
- Collins Writing Prompt: How have comics changed or evolved with society?) to be graded via essay rubric
- Features/Benefits Chart: cruise three comic websites (Pixton, Make Beliefs Comix and Storyboardthat) and list a minimum of six features and six benefits for each. The grade is based on meeting the requirements as follows:
ProficientFeature-Benefit chart is complete with 6 features and benefits SatisfactoryFeature-Benefit chart is somewhat complete with 3-5 features and benefits Needs improvementFeature-Benefit chart is not complete with less than 3 features and benefits - Comic Strip: select one of the three comics and create two original comic strips to be graded based on holistic rubric
Reflection: What a great lesson to conclude the academic year. It goes without say that all of the students as well as myself experienced a transformation process. For me as new teacher coming into their lives about five weeks into the school, I was perceived as the bad guy. For nine months, I had to rise above my fears and limitations to achieve something extraordinary — their acceptance. I believe I achieved this…at the end of the lesson we did a reflective exercise about things they would keep the same and things we would change. Under the category of keep the same, 100% of the students wrote “keep the teacher.” I never imagined this to be on the list of things to keep or change; nonetheless, the response is one way I can use the context of a superhero as a way to extend my abilities into next year.