Khaled Hosseini’s video “Using Real People and Events” motivates learners to reflect on their own experiences and to use those experiences as the basis of a graphic novel that expresses a universal truth. The richly detailed plan...

The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance for the people of Afghanistan, provides a series of exercises designed to be used with a reading of the graphic novel version of Hosseini’s The Kite Runner....

Do students really need to be taught how to read cartoons, comic books, and comic strips? Yes. Just as they need to learn how to read other forms of graphic text such as diagrams, photos, timetables, maps, charts, and tables. Young...

Help the class put a plan in place. With the detailed resource, pupils plan the first section of their graphic novelettes about an invention, creating and labeling their pages. Next, they work with partners to give and receive feedback...

Pass the tea! Using the resource, scholars participate in a Tea Party protocol to analyze text and images about inventions that helped meet societal demands. After sharing their observations with each other, they discuss visual elements...

Whether or not you are new to using graphic organizers with informational or expository text, the materials in this guide will prove useful. 

What can a mural teach pupils about computer science? The instructional activity has scholars create a mural on a wall to learn about bitmap and vector graphics. Along the way, they learn about the graphics coordinate system.

Which graph belongs to which summary statistics? Class members build upon their knowledge of data displays and numerical summaries to connect the two. Pupils make connections between different graphical displays of the same data in...

Eyes on the finish line. Serving as the first part of the end of unit assessment, learners answer questions based on a text about how to write a graphic novel. Using what they've learned, they then create a storyboard about the invention...

"What are Henry's options?" "What do you think Henry will do?" To better understand the central conflict for the main character in Robert Cormier's Tunes for Bears to Dance to, class members engage in a compare-and-contrast activity that...

The artistic choices Art Spiegelman made in his graphic novel, Maus, are the focus of an exercise that asks class members to compare classic comic book forms with Spiegelman’s panels and frames. Directed to specific pages and guided by a...

In collaborative groups, young US historians sort cards (each labeled with a single early American event or issue) according to which of the first four presidents was leading the country at the time. Learners copy the events onto a...

Class members research citizenship in Ancient Rome and in the United States and use the provided graphic organizers to compare the rights and responsibilities of citizens in these two democracies.

What is a graphic novel? How does it differ from a traditional novel? These questions launch a discussion of Fabio Celoni and Mirka Andolfo's graphic novel adaptation of The Kite Runner. Through a series of literature circle discussions,...

Improve class understanding of colonial times by reading an informational text and filling out the accompanying graphic organizer. Class members work with a partner to read, take notes, make inferences, and synthesize information.The...

Pupils practice researching sources and logging citation information with this graphic organizer. After posing a general topic, groups of students are asked to devise general questions about that topic, and to research sources...

Help young readers align character relationships in an activity for Kyoko Mori's Shizuko's Daughter. After kids discuss the characters and how they relate to each other, they use index cards and a graphic organizer to outline the...

Moving on up ... Scholars take a look at how the author of the model essay Elements of Mythology and Theme of Cronus moved up in the writing process from a graphic organizer to an essay. After walking through the writing process of the...

Time to go on a journey! Using a graphic organizer, scholars deconstruct Percy Jackson's hero's journey from the Rick Riordan novel, The Lightning Thief. Next, they begin planning their own hero's journey narrative, creating a profile of...

Let's work together! Using the collaborative resource, scholars work in triads to begin section two of their storyboards about Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of the television. They then practice using linking words and phrases to...

How did the television change people's lives? Learners consider the question as they complete their storyboards about the invention of the TV, adding visual elements along the way. Then, they participate in a peer review to offer and...

How do writers use the interaction between elements like characterization and setting to create meaning? Readers of "A Worn Path" create a series of comic book-style graphics of Eudora Welty's short story and reflect on how Welty...

Grab any two topics, some index cards, and a couple of kids, and you're ready to compare and contrast! The resource provides instructions for this method and three graphic organizers in addition to or in place of the index cards.

What's the story? Learners create the first of four storyboards about the invention of the television, incorporating narrative techniques and descriptive details. Next, they offer and receive feedback by participating in a peer critique...