Toons and Comics

A great way to engage students is by using comic strips. Kids love seeing graphics and characters come to life. I've used comic strips before in my classroom and you can too. Here are several ways you can begin using them with your students.

• give information
• provide directions
• illustrate an idea ( vocabulary or idioms)
• rewrite or summarize a book/story
• illustrate a poem 
• journal response

There are a few free websites that can be used by virtually anyone to create comic strips.

1. Toondoo- I found this site fairly simple to use. It has a more animated feel to it. It gives you the ability to create your own characters and upload pictures and clip art. The only problem I ran into was that the comic did not upload/save for me, but I'm not sure if it was an internal issue or my computer. Nonetheless, creating the comic and personalizing the characters was easy to do. 

Select from a variety of characters, backgrounds, and objects.

Screen shot of comic created using Toondoo.

2. Pixton- Another simple to use web based comic creator. This one gives you the ability to customize characters and background. What I liked best is that it has a wide variety of options from facial expressions to positions, it even gives you the ability to manipulate the character's entire body. I like this one the best, it has the most options, it's free, and user friendly. 

Select the "Advanced" button for more options.

Play around with your characters, manipulate and place them as you wish.

 Finished strip with library information.

3. Make beliefs comix- The best thing about this site is that you do not need to register. The comics are in black and white, but there are plenty of options to choose from. It is user friendly and once you complete it you have the option of printing or emailing your creation. In comparison to the other two there is less choices and you cannot customize the characters or objects other than resizing and flipping them. I think this would be a great option for younger users.

Getting started is a simple task.

Great way to illustrate idioms!

As you can see getting started with any of these sites is simple. Once you have an idea of what you want to do head on over to any of these sites or find an app (there are many), and you will have your comic strip ready to share and enjoy.