Research: www.visuallanguagelab.com

Creative Comic collaboration For

Fun Fluency Development.

MOODLE MOOC 3

Comic characters by MakeBelief comix

MakeBeliefsComix.com

Research: www.visuallanguagelab.com

Creative Comic collaboration For

Fun Fluency Development.

MOODLE MOOC 3

Comic characters by MakeBelief comixInterview questions Comic ideas

1) Planning Brainstorm, Interview, mind map

2) Linguistics Cohn, Sousanis, spin, weave, cut

3) psychology Vygotsky, Cohn, Zimmerman, McCloud

4) Personal story Personal story lesson plan & grassroots

5) Emotional Intelligence Self-expression & feelings

6) Special needs From comic to drama

7) Creativity and fluency Blank bubbles, mood, story

8) Characters as surrogates Safe, magical articulation.

9) Advice to teachers Challenge to experiment

10) Resources 350 printables, blogs, comics, apps

Conclusion Wrapping up with useful links

Research: www.visuallanguagelab.com

Creative Comic collaboration For

Fun Fluency Development.

MOODLE MOOC 3

Comic characters by MakeBelief comix

Research: www.visuallanguagelab.com

Creative Comic collaboration For

Fun Fluency Development.

MOODLE MOOC 3

Comic characters by MakeBelief comix“Just like words in sentences are used

in spoken languages…..sequences of images can

create a visual language”

Neil Cohn

es.

“The process of using drawn characters and writing words for them

to say or think provides a way for

students to integrate key material.”Bill Zimmerman

.material that they are taught each day in school, as well as to reflect on their life

Today, comics is one of the few forms of mass

communication in which individual

voices still have a chance to be heard.

Scott McCloud

“To be better thinkers, to be more whole in our thinking, we need to engage the various viewpoints, the different ways of seeing that we have at our disposal.

In a grand sense this means not building barriers between the arts and

sciences.”Nick Sousanis

www.visuallanguagelab.com

When we combine visual language with spoken and written

language, we create more meaningful

channels of communication. This aids comprehension, memory, language development and

increases motivation.

Comics & linguistics Comics classroom

www.visuallanguagelab.com

What an exciting day!! I’ve got to

make a presentation about

‘comics in education’ at an

important webinar and interview Bill Zimmerman from

MakeBeliefsComix.com

I’ll write out some

questions for Bill and then mind map my

ideas………

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

Do you have a personal story

behind the building of the

Make Belief Comix website?

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

My own love of comics and

understanding of their value as a

learning tool began when I was

a child.

Question 1

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

Collaborative comic ideas

Retelling personal stories.

Students think of a good story from their lives. A comic strip maker with objects, characters and speech bubbles can provide the thinking tools necessary to help simple stories to evolve. A fun thing about MakeBeliefsComix is that students can represent themselves as either human or animal creatures and this all helps to open up the imagination.

First demonstrate by telling students a funny story from your own life and then show them your comic strip. Ask a couple of students to retell your story, using the comic strip as a visual guide. Adapted from storytelling ideas on waze.net

IDEA 1

Grassroots comics

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

Collaborative comic ideas

Some story prompts:

- a funny thing that happened when you were young- a lucky escape- an embarrassing moment- your best day ever- a romantic evening- an adventure while travelling

Students create their own stories at home or in class using online sites like MakeBeliefsComix.com or on print-outs from the website.

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

Collaborative comic ideas

Instruct the students to tell their stories to their partners using the comic strip as a prompt.

When they have finished telling their stories to their partner, they swap the comic strip. Then students find a new partner and retell the story based on the comic strip they have.

As this goes on, students get to retell many different stories that were originally inspired by their classmates.

Finally place all of the comic print stories together, and let the class identify who wrote the original story. Then display the comic printouts around the classroom.

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

Collaborative comic ideas

Online version

How can online students work in pairs or groups?.

They can pair up with partners via break out rooms, skype, hangouts, or asynchronously using voxopop, or mailvu, for example.

In this case they can tell the stories without revealing the comic strip.

They continue retelling stories with new partners. Finally, the whole class meets in the virtual classroom and teacher showcases the comic strips. Everyone has to guess who created the original one.

Then the comic strips can be posted on a class blog and shared on pinterest, class comic sites, electronic posters, such as eduglogster, or wikis, or other visual media sties.

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

What role do you think that emotional intelligence plays in the language learning process?

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

Much of my work is to help students tap into the memories and deep feelings

which nurture them..

Question 2

Emotional intelligence

Creative writing

Using words and pictures together in groups:

Choose a theme the class has been studying and which, preferably, “helps students to tap into memories and feelings”. You can provide some vocabulary and/or grammar structures if you want to focus on form.

Next give random images to each group and they must create their stories around the images in comic form using both captions and speech bubbles to build up the background narrative and introduce dialogue.

Collaborative comic ideas

IDEA 2

Images, words, feelings

Creative writing

Vocabulary and feelings:

Make a list of ‘feeling’ words that you’d like to teach your students. Your aim is to develop their self-expression and self-awareness through creativity. Here’s a sample list.Angry, sad, embarrassed, frustrated, bored, excited, jealous etc.

For more advanced students create a more sophisticated word list. I wrote a story based on feelings from ‘nonviolent communication’ – a language of life – Marshall B. Rosenburg.Find ‘Natural English through story-telling on amazon.

Collaborative comic ideas

IDEA3

Self-expression

Creative writing

Vocabulary and feelings:

Students create comic strip stories in groups based on their list of ‘feeling’ words. This is a wonderful collaborative activity because in doing so, students are really sharing their perceptions and memories of feelings and combining them to create new imaginary experiences.

The MakeBeliefsComix.com site also lets students choose facial expressions for their characters.

When all of the stories are created, each group can act out their story for the class and then reveal their comic strips.

Collaborative comic ideas

New imaginary experiences

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

How does your website help those with special needs, autism or even dyslexia?

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

It helps student to create stories which help them to express

what is inside of them.

Question 3

Special needs

Creative writing

Best practice for special needs,dyslexia and all teaching:

Dyslexic students are primarily visual learners. That’s the power of comics in helping dyslexic students to read and write.

Make stories come to life. From comic to drama. This could be from a real comic, one you created especially, or one they created themselves.

This idea incorporates drama with something I learnt from a recent webinar with luke Prodromou. Create a magic box for the class where students bring in their favourite soft toys or puppets and keep them in the box. Students create skits or puppet shows to act out stories from the comic. Being dyslexic What is dyslexia? Also inspired by specialed.about.com

Collaborative comic ideas

IDEA4

Comic to drama

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

How can storytelling through comics develop creativity and

fluency?

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

Students with limited reading or writing skills are not as

overwhelmed in dealing with comic panels as they might be

with too much text.

Question 4

Creativity & fluency

Creative writingCollaborative comic

ideasCan you

resist blank

speech bubbles??

IDEA5

Blank bubbles

Creative writingCollaborative ideas

Step one.Listen to a dialogue from a movie clip or audio file.Write down what you can hear.Check what you wrote with your partner.Check with transcript.Convert into a comic dialogue.

Step twoPersonalise.Add a new element to the dialogue. Different tense, mood, characters. Create new comics and dialogues based on these changes. Compare and contrast with originals and discuss differences/similarities.

Audio/video/dictation

Let’s have a self-

expression brain-storm.

IDEA6

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

What's the idea behind using comic characters as surrogates for self-

expression?

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

I think using these characters to express our ideas and feelings provides a safe way for students to say what is

deep inside them.

Question 5

surrogates

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

Collaborative comic ideas

If you could be one of these characters for the day which would you choose, what would you do, how would you feel?

Which character suits your friend/partner /family member/pet in your opinion? Create a character for your friend. Choose a character and create your story.Also inspired by story arts.

IDEA6

Characters

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

Advise and challenge

Question 6

What advice would you give to teachers who want to start teaching

with comics??

I’d like to throw out a challenge to the teachers to experiment and set aside a 20-minute period at the end

of each school day when kids are encouraged to create a daily comic

or comic strip of something they learned or read or experienced or

imagined that day

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

350 more lesson plans

Special needs

Limitless lesson ideas

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

IDEAS AND APPS.

MAKE BELIEF COMIX IS NOW A FREE IPAD APP

21 WAYS TO USE MAKEBELIEFSCOMIX.COM IN THE CLASSROOMBy Bill Zimmerman

Students talk to the New York Times about learning EnglishMakeBeliefComix

Explore

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

Collection of significant links.

SPECIAL NEEDS

SPARK YOUR WRITING

MakeBeliefComix Resources

AUTISM SPECTRUM

LEARNING DISABILITIES

SPARK YOUR WRITING

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

Wrapping up.

More useful links

20+ tips for teaching with comics

Shelly Terrell

Social and emotionalapproaches

Sylvia Guinan

Creative and happy

Sylvia Guinan@WiziQ

Follow me at www.sylviasenglishonline.org

The End….and the beginning

Scoopit links

Janet Bianchini

Scrambled comic collaboration

1) Find or create a comic strip and cut up the panels so that the story line is mixed-up.

2) If you want to practice specific vocabulary or grammar it’s best to make your own comic and feel free to design the story as you please.

3) Put students into groups to recreate their stories.

You can use comic websites online ,Cut up old comics, or draw your own.

Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?Do you have a personal story behind the building of the Make Belief Comix website?

Acknowledgements::.MOODLE MOOC 3

Special thanks to Dr. Nellie Deutsch for organising the MOODLE

MOOC and for this invitation to present.

Also thanks to Shelly Terrell for EVO

eperfect ebook inspiration.

Professional Development