National Comic Book Day is today, so to celebrate, we at Mirodo have decided to offer you a few tips on celebrating it with your pupils in a fun and engaging way. This day honours the art, creators and stories of comic books worldwide. Fans, collectors, readers and anyone who enjoys comic books can celebrate today! Includes Free Guess The Superhero Activity Cards!
Here’s how you can celebrate National Comic Book Day with your pupils using these quick and easy tips.
- Decorate the Room
Keeping with the spirit of National Comic Book Day, you can decorate your classroom either fully or partially with comic book related decorations. For example, you can use comic book images you like and find appropriate online, print then out on A3 paper (or really whatever size you think will work best) and stick them around the classroom. This can create a more unified learning environment through a fun and engaging theme, which is likely to be favoured by most of your pupils. Check out this blog for a super classroom inspiration!
- Use Comic Books to Teach English Concepts
Comic books are a great way to focus on literary features and provide a great and engaging basis to delve into English. Focus on onomatopoeia how comics bring words to life. Our linking partner BBC Bitesize has a great lesson on this exact topic. Check that out here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zct3hcw
- Themed Lessons
You can extend the comic book theme within other lessons too. For instance, in art you can focus on experimenting with a comic book style or even take a look at influential comic book artists. Moreover, maths lessons with example questions can be used and adapted into the theme as well. For example, instead of John having 4 apples, Batman can have 4 batarangs or any other comparison. In PE, focus on superhero inspired exercises that are seen performed by said hero in the comics, TV shows or movies. Here’s some superhero inspired PE games that may be of interest. https://www.gophersport.com/blog/superhero-pe-games-to-get-students-moving-video/
- Organise Small Competitions
Organise a small quiz or multiple choice questionnaire in the last 5 minutes of the lesson, which focuses on comic book trivia. You can base the questions on comics, TV shows, movies or learning examples with a comic book context. The class can compete in teams or individually.
- Set Themed Homework
Themed homework can provide a great way to continue to the comic book theme. For example, reading a new comic book and preparing a presentation on it helps pupils to build key skills. Alternatively, your pupils can design custom comic book themed English and maths questions like those in tip number 3. The goal here is to make homework more fun by connecting it to an overarching theme, so you can choose whichever option you feel is more fitting.
- Comic Books in Class
Implementing comic books in the classroom can seem a bit scary to teachers out of concern for causing distractions and disrupting learning. However, the advantages of their presence outweigh the disadvantages as they can serve as inspirations, the characters within can act as positive role models and cause an overall increase in creativity. We recommend a TED talk by Gene Luen Yang on the topic which you can watch here: https://www.ted.com/talks/gene_luen_yang_comics_belong_in_the_classroom?language=en#t-4543
We hope this guide was helpful and gave you enough tips to try with your pupils. As always, use the ones you believe are most applicable to them and their unique learning style. Good luck and don’t forget to have fun!
For further support from us regarding more help with KS2 English and Maths, please visit our website at mirodoeducation.com or visit our social media pages for more information:
