Reading Like Writers, Writing Like Readers – Graphic Novels

Course Description:

Course Description 

This week will be devoted to third-and fourth-grade readers and writers who will develop their growing skills, learning about its power and purpose in a close study of graphic novels. During these sessions, students will be exposed to reading and writing in the high-interest format of graphic novels in a variety of genre–realistic fiction, fantasy, nonfiction, and historical fiction. The writing session will coincide with the reading unit. By the end of the week, students will be reading graphic novels in their reading level band and engaging in writing a graphic novel for their classmates. 

While this work is definitely fun, it is more complex! Learning to engage a reader through pictures requires explicit instruction around techniques that will be taught and practiced throughout the course. Students will learn how to write a graphic novel, from initial doodling to the final product. This week will allow them a unique experience to develop informed theories about how graphic novels are written. While reading graphic novels, they will continue to learn to develop their stamina, fluency, and comprehension. 

Each day, students will participate in reading and writing mini-lessons, have time to read and write independently, engage in one-on-one conferences with the teacher, and receive individualized instruction. They will learn to deepen their reading comprehension and lift the level of their own writing through the use of a variety of literacy skills, strategies, tools, and mentor texts. 

Target Skills 

Reading 

• Students will read with purpose and understanding. 
• Students will read with independence. 
• Students will read with accuracy and fluency. 
• Students will use thinking stems to generate thinking before, during, and after reading. ● Students follow a timeline of events that happen in their books.
• Students will learn the features of graphic novels 
• Students will learn vocabulary around graphic novels-e.g., panel, gutter, emanata ● Students will practice comprehension skills such as inferring, synthesizing, summarizing, and monitoring for meaning 

Writing 

• Writers will learn techniques such as how speech and thought bubbles contrast what a character is thinking inside to what they say out loud. 
• Writers will be able to write with increased stamina. 
• Writers will learn to structure a well-paced story 
• Writers will learn and use planning strategies such as scripts and bookmaps ● Students learn to set a character up with a challenge or problem, then immediately think up a believable resolution to this problem. 
• Writers will use a story structure and logical sequence of events 
• Writers will learn features to use, such as speech balloons, panels, and their effects on readers 
• Learn to show, not tell, using characters’ body language, eyebrows, and movements. ● Writers will experience the writing process; Collecting ideas, doodling, Drafting, Revising, Editing, Publishing, Celebrating.