New Teaching Technique
For Sally Brown’s students, a picture is worth a thousand words. The Georgia Southern University College of Education professor and longtime literacy advocate recently conducted research aimed at exploring ways to help struggling elementary school students learning to read. Instead of a traditional book, Brown’s unique classroom approach used graphic novels.
This genre resembles a comic strip with colorful art and text placed in speech bubbles, and is an innovative way to explore the reading, writing and thinking processes of young English language learners. These students have a tougher time than most because they are learning a new language and learning to read at the same time.
Graphic novels differ from traditional books in that there are a limited amount of words, and an abundance of pictures that help students interpret the text. “Graphic novels present stories told through dialogue, and they help kids that struggle with reading. These novels help students with the reading process; there are fewer words, and the graphic nature helps students comprehend text,” said Brown.
Brown’s background in literacy stems from her 13 years spent in the classroom, reinforcing literacy skills in kindergarten through third grade students. “I worked with English language learners that struggled, specifically, Spanish-speaking students. I was bothered by the way other teachers treated them, so I became an advocate for immigrant students and their families,” she said about her experiences.
Last spring, Brown worked with a class of 22 second graders, four days per week, dividing her research into two segments: the first, teaching students to read graphic novels; and secondly, having students write their own graphic novels.
Over the course of the three month study, students read over 200 graphic novels, which are documented on the class blog exploringgraphicnovels.edublogs. org, along with the graphic novels written and narrated by each student on posted videos. “Within the past year, there have been a lot of graphic novels published,” said Brown, “and some of the popular series read by our class include The Lunch Lady and Baby Mouse.”
Does the concept of graphic novels mean that traditional books are losing their spot in the classroom? Not necessarily, said Brown.
“For these students – especially the English language learners – I saw a lot of benefits. For example, they were able to use the pictures to develop the context of the story. So, instead of using words to describe a setting, the students are able to look at the picture and recognize the location.
“These students were struggling with decoding text, which affects their comprehension. The graphic novels left space in their brains to focus on comprehension instead of decoding. Students feel that a book is manageable, just by having fewer words and more pictures on the page,” she said. Some of Brown’s reading strategies included teaching students to look at punctuation marks, which helped them distinguish between the narrator and what a character is saying.
In order to continue helping these young students, Brown feels that it all begins with the educator. Currently, she is teaching a required master’s level literacy course that instructs teachers on the specifics of how to meet the needs of English language learners in their classrooms.