Friday, November 2, 2012

This week’s readings were about the Graphic novel.  While I have friends who have increasingly added Graphic novels to their must read list, I have only read one graphic novel which is mentioned in the text, titled Maus.  In my personal experience, while a graphic novel has pictures like a child’s story, the plot, images, motifs, and symbols are far from an elementary rating.  I believe that the graphic novel with become a contestant thing seen in the classroom because of its popularity.  All too often I see teachers trying to force things on students that have no relevance to the student’s life.  Students who have grown up in the visual age that they have need the graphic novel.  Why should we as future educators fight this?  One of our goals as English educators should be to encourage our students to read more.  The graphic novel is a positive thing, it helps students who have trouble reading to visualize the story that they are reading, and it helps readers who already love to read to expand their horizon by opening them up to new forms of writing.  I personally believe that a teacher should engage as many senses of their students in the classroom as possible and graphic novels help to do that.  

1 comment:

  1. I'm glad you found the readings to have merit. Tomorrow we will be discussing how these are both valuable and problematic. I look forward to more of your views.

    And you are right, we are a generation that has grown up with visuals...so we should attend more to them in school.

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