Comics can be powerful teaching tools when they are used properly, and not just in art classes. The right comic can help students learn to read, better understand challenging concepts, and help develop their creative thinking and reasoning skills. If you don’t know how to integrate comics into your tutoring sessions or you aren’t quite convinced that they can be helpful, here are some ideas to consider.
Teaching Children to Read
Comics are a visual medium as much as a literary medium. In its most basic format, a comic is a series of pictures with written narration. While this narration can be every bit as complicated and involved as a short story or a novel, it can also be very simple. If you have a student who is struggling with their reading, a comic that matches simple sight words with pictures that show what the words mean. Your student will eventually have to learn to read without these visual aids, but combining words with drawings could make them easier to remember for some students.
Teaching Complicated Concepts
A comic strip or book obviously won’t be the best way to teach all complicated concepts, but they can make it easier for students to understand things like history, cause-and-effect, and basic storytelling. Comics are great for presenting a linear narrative, which can help students get a good grasp on a series of historical events or a story about how actions have consequences. Naturally, some colorful and fun illustrations will make the entire lesson that much more memorable.
Letting Your Students Make Their Own Comics
Of course, you don’t have to just present comics to your students as teaching aids; you can have a lot of fun by having your students draw and write their own comics. While this will be much easier for students who are more artistically inclined, just about anybody can draw a simple comic that tells a basic story, even if all a student can draw is a stick figure and write short sentences. No matter what your student’s writing and drawing level might be, you can tailor this activity to match it. This can help improve a student’s creativity and do something that might be a nice change of pace from your usual lessons and learning activities.
Alex Mallory is the Founder and President of Competitive Edge Tutoring in New York, New York, where he helps students hone their academic skills and prepare for the college application process.
During his own academic career, Alex was no stranger to the stress that accompanies the intense workload and high standards demanded by the education system. An ambitious and hard-working student, like many others Alex knew the pressure of performing at his peak constantly or else potentially hindering his college applications.
As he progressed throughout his education, Alex attempted several times to work with tutors; however — on top of the exorbitant hourly fees — he felt that doing so only increased the amount of work on his plate and didn’t serve to provide any structure or relief from the pressure he was experiencing. As a result, when he was in the place to do so himself, Alex began offering tutoring lessons specifically for the SAT and ACT while attending Williams College for his degree.
After graduating from Williams College, Alex briefly worked for a national tutoring company as an SAT tutor, but quickly grew dissatisfied with the large and corporate approach to the activity. He knew tutoring was something he cared about, but the current system wasn’t working the way he needed. So, Alex left his job and decided to found Competitive Edge Tutoring as an answer to the need that so many students have.
The tutoring sphere is an incredibly saturated industry, but his approach and philosophy behind Competitive Edge Tutoring quickly helped Alex distinguish himself and his business. Where other companies apply a cookie-cutter approach to teaching that is often impersonal and leaves students wanting more, Alex implemented a more individualized approach to help students achieve their goals. Alongside tutoring students in subjects like mathematics, language, science, and the social sciences, Alex also created a unique and time-tested approach to the standardized reasoning tests most students must take, including the SAT, ACT, ISEE, SSAT, and SHSAT.
Looking forward to the future of academia, Alex Mallory is excited about the possibilities that “distance learning” has to offer when it comes to not only tutoring but education in general. To spur this along and contribute a driving effort towards this growth, Alex has teamed up with a software startup out of San Francisco to extend the same kinds of high-quality, cutting-edge standardized test preparation services he offers his students in New York with students living in rural or otherwise remote areas around the country.
For more about Alex Mallory, check out his blog!
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