Reinventing the Composition Classroom, or How Making Comics Can Clarify the Composing Process

Comics and graphic novels are redefining what and how we read and see. And, increasingly, they are redefining how we teach. Multimodal texts, like comics, require that we expand our conception of literacy beyond reading and writing to include, for example, the kind of visual literacy that prepares students to “read” texts that employ images, symbols, graphs, diagrams, etc. Researchers are discovering that, despite an entrenched cultural bias against comics, the literacy skills required to read them are often as sophisticated as those employed in reading school-based texts. I propose that we use these skills a bridge between students out-of-school and in-school literacies. Here, I provide a model for developing students\u27 academic literacy, especially in the area of composition, by having them explore the comics mode and the composing process behind it