Comic Strip Assignment using Pixton.com

1. Profile of students

In my group, there are four students. Three of the students have an ‘intermediate-low’ level of proficiency, which means that they are able to read the full sentence and have no problem understanding the meaning of the sentences. However, they are not fully comfortable in producing new sentences. The other student has a slightly better command in English, where the student feels less burdened when he/she has to speak out. Still, all of these four students need time before they produce a sentence, and proper guidelines should be given before the activity so that the students would not get confused and focus on the activity.

2. Goals/objectives of the lesson

- Students will be able to read the comic in English and understand the overall situation.

- Students will be able to create a dialogue in a new context in English.

- The target sentence structure in this lesson is ‘possessive’, like ‘my’, ‘your’, and ‘mine’.

3. Instruction

First, read the English comic strip given by the teacher. (in page 2)

Each student takes turns and read out loud all the lines in each frame, one by one.

Second, discuss the meaning of the comic strip in a group.

What is the story about? What kind of possessives are used in this comic strip?

Third, create your own story by setting a totally different background.

Fill out the blanks in the comic strip in page 3, and then edit the comic strip. You can change not only the speech bubbles but also the appearance, facial expression, pose, background and settings.

A : Ahhhhhh Ahhhhhh

B : Why are you crying?

A : I’ve lost my _____________.

B : Is this your _______________?

A : Oh, no that isn’t mine.

B : Is this your _______________?

A : Oh, no that isn’t mine.

B : Is this your _______________?

A : Oh, yes, that is my ____________________.

B : __________________________.

Finally, take all the different roles from the comic strip and do an audio role-play in front of a class.

Two students can be the actors, the other two can be a narrator and a presenter who explains ‘how the group changed the original version and reinterpreted into your own story’.

* Comic Strip given by the teacher

* Worksheet : Create a new story (fill out the BLANKS)

4. Reflection

For this week task, I had to create my own comic for my class as an education tool. To do that, I first registered on the Pixton website. I liked that there were options where I could either register as a teacher or a student since they provide different functions and settings for each role. I registered as a teacher, and not only can I make my own comic, but I can also invite my students in my e-class and share my comic with them. Furthermore, students are able to respond to the comic I created and even make their own ones. The process of making a comic was super easy. Since there are a variety of options in terms of background, the number of characters, facial expressions, clothes, posture, and the content of speech bubbles, I thought it would be a great space for both students and teachers to produce creative stories without any limits.

I believe comic is an effective tool when teaching English. Comic has a strong visual effect that boosts the understanding of students. Students, even those who are not competent with their English, will feel less burden if they are given the comic strip, not the storybook. In addition, because the shift from each frame is comparatively fast, they can keep their focus even if there are some difficult terms or expressions that they do not know.

I designed an ‘open-ended comic strip’ activity, where students can participate not as a passive learner but also as an active learner. The basic goal of this activity is to learn different forms of ‘possessive’, like ‘my, mine, your’. Therefore, I intentionally put lines like ‘Is it yours?’ or ‘It isn’t mine.’ and have them repeated over and over again so that the students can easily achieve the grammar point. Not only that, however, after reading a given comic, I had the students create their own comic. I thought it would be a challenging task if I have the students make a totally new comic book. Maybe the students will not know where to begin with, and most of all, since these students are not confident with English, they will be easily discouraged. Therefore, I made some blanks in some frames and opened some possibilities to change the whole different setting, characters, and even the ending part. In this way, the students can participate and be an active learner, still feeling less burdened. I believe the more imagination the students to bring, the more interested they can be.