Hacking Graphic Novels

Too many of our kids struggle with reading and writing

Now, you can help us end illiteracy and unlock the love of reading and writing in all learners, with the power of graphic novels and comics.

Teaching with comics increases engagement, and the ultimate value is in helping your students look with care, see possibilities, consider alternatives, ask nuanced questions, show their thinking, and bravely tell stories they would not have told in any other medium.

Best of all, even your most reluctant readers and writers will engage enthusiastically with your lessons and content.

Hacking Graphic Novels offers new ideas and practical tools for teachers of all subjects, grades, and experience levels with sequential art. Shveta Miller, a teacher leader and global advocate for teaching with comics, shows teachers how to:

• Guide students to look at visuals slowly with curiosity, open-mindedness, and intention
• Develop independent learners who explore the possibilities and real-world applications
• Encourage students to think, process, and express their understanding of complex systems and ideas
• Help students escape the comfort zone and productively struggle in the growth zone
• Use close reading and close looking for writers to inspire comprehension through storytelling
• Inspire colleagues, administrators, families, and students with the power of visual texts

Want all of your students to learn through storytelling and express their learning in writing? Grab Hacking Graphic Novels today, and watch your students smile tomorrow.

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

How to Use This Book

Hack 1: Build Investment in Visual Storytelling. . . . . . . . . . . . . .19

Establish the Value of Graphic Stories

Hack 2: Uncover the Elements of Comics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45

Guide Students' Discovery of Tools and Devices

Hack 3: Encourage Slow Looking, Committing Closure, and

Resisting Closure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75

Help Students Combine Words and Pictures to Tell Compelling

Stories and Communicate Complexity

Hack 4: Think, Learn, and Communicate by Creating Comics. . .109

Use Drawing and Visual Storytelling for Deep Thinking

Hack 5: Disrupt the Comics Canon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153

Expand Concepts About Possibilities

Hack 6: Create With Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .179

Experiment with Creative Limits

Hack 7: Offer a Flexible Process for Creating Graphic

Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197

Model Creation Processes

Hack 8: Connect With the Comics Community. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .231

Connect Students to Real-World Graphic Novelists

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .247

Graphic Novels Made Me a Better Teacher