teaching with comics

School Visits and Workshops

events and news, resources for teachers, teaching with comics

Do you love connecting kids with creators? That’s fantastic, because I love helping creative kids put their ideas into words and pictures! I’ve taught classes in comic making and diary comics at Lexington’s Living Arts and Science Center, and I’ve taught workshops through Kentucky Arts and Humanities. During the pandemic, I also led a weekly drawing hangout for kids for a year and a half, and guest-taught at Homeschool Co-op 2020. Workshop activities include: playing games like “Animal + Emotion + Occupation” or “Ghostwriter”, making four-panel comics, or creating a class-wide zine. Check out the School Visit and Workshop flyer below! Then email re@rachelelliott.me or use the contact form in the ABOUT page.

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Teaching with Comics: Outlining a Presentation

teaching with comics

Today in my Writing Comics class at the University of Kentucky, we used comic making as a way to plan a short presentation. Each student has read a graphic novel of their choice, and they are planning a 3-minute talk about the book, the maker, and some specific comic-making decisions the maker made.

We do a lot of freewriting in this class, but it’s rarely text-only. Instead, I tell everyone to grab a sheet of blank paper or graph paper and draw 4 panels. So it made sense to outline our talks this way, too. We drew six panels, imagining each panel as 30 seconds of our talk, and went to work drawing and writing ideas.

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