With the release of a new graphic novel by the Señor Wooly company, we wanted to give you some ideas on how you can teach with a graphic novel. If you are not ready or don’t have the funds to purchase a class set, don’t worry… graphic novels are a great addition to your FVR classroom library that students will be motivated to read on their own. However, if you have a class set you can also use it as a little unit. So here are some tips on teaching the graphic novel “Billy y Las Botas”:

First of all, the Teacher’s Guide from Senor Wooly is a must and worth every penny. You get a Powerpoint with EVERY frame from the comic (with AND without dialogue). For beginners to CI, there is a circling guide, which can give you ideas on questions to ask and statements to make when presenting a particular slide.

There are other activities that you can use. Check out the “training videos” on this page to watch 18 short and informative clips on other ideas.

Here is what I did this year:
-Using the teacher’s guide, I took 70 illustrations to present to the class. This took about 2 days
-At the end of day 1 or the beginning of day 2, I had students copy a summary in Spanish of what we had talked about so far. At the end of day one I sent out the slides that we talked about in class as well as captions for each slide. Students had to move the caption to the correct slide (see video above)
-Then I finished the presentation on day 2. And then on day 3 the students finished copying down the rest of the summary of the story.
-On day 3, I let students read the comic on their own.
-We then watch the video, Billy y las Botas.
-I assigned the first 3 nuggets of the video to be completed over several days.
-Day 4 students will read student0-created versions of the comic (a project that I did a few years ago). This will provide them with additional input. I will then have students take a matching quiz where students match a caption to the correct illustration. (Copy in the files below)
On day 5, I will probably have students answer some questions that require them to look through the comic again (copy in the files below).

Google Drive Folder with Files

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