Understanding Immigrants Through Comics: Great Immigrants, Great Americans Unit
- Preview |
- Resources & Preparation |
- Instructional Plan |
- Related Resources |
- Standards
Overview
Using Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (1994) as a theoretical foundation, students will learn about how the comics medium works cognitively; analyze the Carnegie Corporation’s Great Immigrants, Great Americans: The Comic Book; and produce their own short comics about great immigrants in their own families (or any other important person in their lives).
- Week 1: Learn the theories and techniques that underpin the comics medium.
- Week 2: Read, annotate, and complete a graphic organizer about a selected two-page comic profiling one great American immigrant.
- Week 3: Conduct research into a great immigrant in their own families (or any other important person in their lives).
- Week 4: Plan/brainstorm a two-page comic about their own family’s immigrant/important person using all previously learned theories and techniques.
- Week 5: Create a full-color two-page comic about their own family’s immigrant/important person.
Featured Resources
- Digital or printout copies of Great Immigrants, Great Americans: The Comic Book
- Graphic organizers for analysis, research, and planning
- Practical and digital art supplies
Materials and Technology
- Theoretical foundations Power Point slideshow presentation (also available as a PDF)
Printouts
- Two-page comics from Great Immigrants, Great Americans: The Comic Book, if needed
- Comics analysis graphic organizer
- Family research graphic organizer
- Planning/brainstorming graphic organizer
Websites
This website houses the Carnegie Corporation’s Great Immigrants, Great Americans comic series, which will serve as the analytical foundation for this unit. Students will be assigned one of the 13 immigrant profiles to analyze and share before they begin the process of creating their own two-page comics, in the same style, of their own family’s great immigrant/important person.
Preparation
1. Tailor the introductory slideshow presentation to your needs and style.
2. Create a means for assigning the immigrant profiles to the students. I like to hand students superhero character cards on their way into the classroom that will determine who their partners will be and which comic they will study.
3. Upload all graphic organizers to Google Classroom (or whatever digital system you use) and print all graphic organizers so students may work in whatever way works best for them.
4. Have digital art platforms downloaded onto personal or classroom devices and make available pencils and markers so students may create their comics in whatever way works best for them.
Student Objectives
Students will:
- learn the theoretical foundations of comics analysis as put forth in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics.
- use the theoretical foundations of comics analysis to analyze a two-page comic to the natural conclusion of finding parallels between form and content.
- internalize what it means to be an immigrant who contributes to the fabric of American society.
- plan and create their own two-page comics about an immigrant in their own family (or another important person) using techniques to effectively parallel form and content.
Session Introduction and Activities
(Week One)
1. Use the slideshow presentation to teach students the theoretical underpinnings for the unit. Your style as a classroom educator should be on display here, but be sure to make it fun and as interactive as possible.
(Week Two)
1. Organize students into pairs or small groups in whatever way works best for you, your students, and your classroom.
2. Student groups should read and annotate their assigned two-page comic from the Carnegie Corporation’s Great Immigrants, Great Americans comic series. Here, they will not only record the basic who/what/ when/where/why/how facts, but they will also use the theoretical foundations laid in the first week of the unit to comment on the creators’ use of page layout, panel composition, panel-to-panel transitions, facial expressions/body language/hand gestures/emanata, text elements, and color.
3. The week’s analysis concludes only when students have successfully drawn parallels between the physical movements of the page and the conceptual movements of the story.
(Week Three)
1. Students will conduct research into the great immigrants in their own families (or in other important aspects of their lives) by conducting interviews with family members, searching for family documents (official records, letters, other writings), and family photos.
2. Each class day will be devoted to organizing the resources found, which may include scanning or typing textual artifacts, placing artifacts in chronological order, or scanning photos and other images.
3. With their groups from the previous week, students can share what they’ve found for peer feedback in addition to the teacher feedback they will receive from you.
(Week Four)
1. Students will use their research to plan the two-page comic they will create showcasing their family’s great immigrant. This planning will include a basic plot, a full script, and thumbnail drawings of each page.
2. Students must include at least one of the following: speech balloon, thought balloon, narration box, sound effect, emanata. In addition, for variety of page design, they must also include one of each of the following: long shot, medium shot, close-up, bird’s-eye view, worm’s-eye view, eye-level shot, establishing shot. Finally, they must include at least 3 different panel-to-panel transitions.
(Week Five)
1. Students will use the art supplies and their research-based planning from the previous week to create their full-color two-page comics chronicling the life and achievement(s) of their family’s great immigrant.
2. The process will require them to apply half their energy and attention to expressing the research through story and the other half applying the new comics theories and techniques they’ve learned to make sure that they are putting into action the parallels between form and content.
From Theory to Practice
This unit is based on a synthesis of ideas presented in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (1994). In the book, McCloud gradually builds a framework for understanding how the comics medium works, starting with the concept of iconography, or “image[s] used to represent a person, place, thing or idea” (27). He then includes a discussion of amplification through simplification, which deals with “the universality of cartoon imagery” (30), particularly as it works on the reader’s brain through “received . . . instantaneous” visual information and “perceived” textual information (49). Next, he demonstrates the process of closure, the “phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole” (63), which allows readers to draw conclusions in the gutters, or the blank space between the panels. By combining the theories and techniques from McCloud’s seminal work, students can learn how to perform comics analysis at its highest level: paralleling form and content.
Work Cited
McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding comics: The invisible art. William Morrow.
Student Assessment / Reflections
Students will be assessed at several key points in the unit.
- Assessment 1: Comics Analysis Graphic Organizer (Resource 2)
- Assessment 2: Family Research (Resource 3)
- Assessment 3: Planning (Resource 3)
- Assessment 4: Final Comic (Resource 5)
Standards
A complete listing of the standards can be found here.
3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
9. Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.
11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).