Making Learning Visible: Comics in the Classroom

Ms. Jones’s 4th-grade ELA students transformed the short story "All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury into a comic. The objective was to show as a six-panel comic an important moment in the science-fiction tale, when the sun finally comes out for one hour after seven years of rainstorms.

Before drawing we reviewed the sensory details of the story—from the onomatopoeia of the constant rain to the warmth of the sun. Next we drew six panels of the story. We incorporated comics tools like camera zoom: zooming out to draw a wide-shot of Venus, the story's setting, and zooming in to draw a close-up of the characters' facial expressions, their joy at finally feeling the sun's warmth for the first time in their young lives. 

My favorite panel was a close-up of a glitching film reel described in the story: 

It was as if, in the midst of a film concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, something had, first, gone wrong with the sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of the blasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film from the projector and inserted in its place a peaceful tropical slide which did not move or tremor.

The diagonal lines of the film strip, and the small thumbnail images contained therein, were so dynamic and exemplary of the possibilities of comics as an art form.

If you would like to incorporate comics into your classroom, but aren't sure how, consider enrolling in my comics PD!