Especially for Teachers

Bright Ideas Lesson Plans

The ABC´S of Comics

Learning to sequence events can now be fun when you use the daily comics and Sunday comics. This multi-level activity will have your students paying more attention to details, looking more closely at pictures, and predicting the next event in order to put these comics in the correct order. All of these are FCAT skills that students can begin to master in a non-threatening, engaging way. Many of your students will gladly bring you in a steady supply of comics for this sequencing activity.

NOTE: Before you cut up the comics, pay careful attention to the order that they appear in the newspaper. The difficulty level of this activity will range from easy to complex, depending upon the comic.

Extensions for this activity can include: use comics written in a foreign language (more visual clues will be used), ask students to continue writing the comic strip, omit one segment and have them fill in the missing piece, or white out all of the speech bubbles and let the students write what they think each character´s speech bubble might contain.

Middle and high school students loved these when I tried it in a summer program at Bethune-Cookman College. My third grade students have continued to beg for more. They love to look at the pictures first, then, they read the bubbles for clues. Once they start, they do not want to stop.

Beginning with the everyday comics, have students put the 2 or 3 frame comics in the correct order. Once they have mastered this, they can progress to the Sunday comics, which include more frames. It all looks quite easy until you notice that there are many possibilities for why a frame could go somewhere else! Kindergarten students can look at wordless picture comics and give details that they see in the pictures.

Lianne Fernández
Reading Specialist/Literacy Coach
Westside Elementary School

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