Getting Graphic

I have to be honest, I had never heard of a graphic novel before my junior year of college. The fact that I went so long without knowing about an entire genre of books astounds me. I also must shamefully admit that after learning what graphic novels were I was pretty judgmental of them. I basically placed them all in the category of manga or anime (are those even the same thing?). Without thinking, I stereotyped an entire category of books and had made up my mind that there wasn't one single graphic novel out there that I could like. Thankfully, that all changed when I started looking at graphic novels for supplemental teaching materials a couple weeks ago.

After asking my mentor teacher about how the Romeo and Juliet unit was going, he told me that the students were struggling to understand the language (and therefore the content) and very few were actually turning in their assignments. This was a few days before I was going to give a supervised lesson. I decided that I needed to do something different with my lesson--something that would grab the attention of my 9th grade students and make Shakespeare more relevant to them. I thought about how Shakespeare intended for his plays to be acted out on a stage so that the audience could visualize the text better. Which got me thinking, why not bring a graphic novel into the class? This would allow students to look at an illustrated version of the play and better visualize the text (just like Shakespeare intended).

I incorporated reader's theater, a graphic novel, and discussion into my lesson and it went over really well with both my students and my supervisor. I received a lot of positive feedback and most of the students said that the graphic novel helped them understand the play better and they enjoyed the visual element. Additionally, my supervisor said that the graphic novel was a great way to engage the students. I definitely foresee myself using graphic novels as supplemental teaching materials in the future.