Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
This week’s reading was based on chapter one of Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, written by Scott McCloud. The whole reading was shown as a big comic strip which was super neat as I have never actually written one. At the beginning of the story, we had something in common, we both never really paid attention to comics in school. He however had turned to them in grade ten where I am only giving them another go right now in my second year of university. Throughout his comic he goes onto talking about how comic books come with a stereotype and were never used to their full potential. Comic books are an open space where the sky is the limit. For example, his comic book. He is using his comic book as a way of teaching which I had never even thought about before. With comics having a stereotypical definition to them, Will Eisner refer to them as Sequential art which I talked about in last weeks blog post. Scott McCloud emphasises that there is no specific definition as there are many. You can use a comic strip as a creative way to teach, learn, express your ideas and every other thing that you can think of. This is an idea that I will for sure be using when I become a teacher.
Reference
McCloud, S. (1994). The invisible art understanding comics. NY: HarperCollins
Visual Journals in the Elementary Classroom
This week we had the opportunity to choose a chapter we wanted to read and write about. I decided to go with chapter seventeen in our textbook which is titled Visual Journals in the Elementary Classroom and written by Kit Grauer. As my time as an Educational Assistant, these were in most of the classrooms. Visual Journals can consist of both words and visuals but used more as a sketchbook. Children are able to have the freedom of drawing whatever they are thinking of during that time. Sometimes a teacher will give their student a prompt that they should try and follow but they still get to do whatever they want with that prompt. Something that I did not know or think about in terms of visual journals is how valuable the are in the younger grades which Grauer mentions in this chapter. They can be used to watch the progress of each individual child. As the year goes on their journals should include more and more details and their ideas should be outside of the box. You would even get to watch the quality of the drawings get better. Both of these things are important aspects to have in your classroom, no matter the age. It is another thing that I will for sure be incorporating.
Reference
Grauer, Irwin, , & (editors), Visual Journals in the Elementary Classroom. E. StARTing with… () pdf (4th ed.). Canadian Society for Education through Art. (p. 150-155)