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Comics, one way to deal with students' writing skills

At Elementary levels students generally lack vocabulary to provide background and character descriptions for their stories. You may provide some hints but they will not be able to express exactly what they want. However the web offers some http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifinteresting tools that you can get students to exploit and enjoy.

This is the case of Pixton.

Pixton introduces the world to Click-n-Drag Comics™, a revolutionary new patent-pending technology that gives anyone the power to create amazing comics on the web.From fully posable characters to dynamic panels, props, and speech bubbles, every aspect of a comic can be controlled in an intuitive click-n-drag motion.


Steps taken:

1. Students read a story from their coursebooks about a man killing a sheriff and putting the blame on his own brother (sounds like a tragedy, doesn't it?-but the case is presented along humorous lines...so it doesn't hurt that much)
2. An extension activity is presented : That man is now sorry for what he did in the past and students have to tell that on a comic.
3.The Pixton page is introduced. What's interesting about it is that the site is in several languages, so if students have to work alone they may appeal to their L1 for further help. The site offers video tutorials and students were asked to explore them as homework (this stage is really time consuming in class).
4.When students knew how to manage within the application frames they started producing the extension activity. This stage was done in class.

Needless to say, the whole process was extremely motivating for them. And guess what: Nobody neglected their homework ! (and they turned out expert Pixton operators!)

Students' outcomes :



More productions

A conversation with a friend
Yes. You need THERAPY!
Your next destination: PRISON
Good you're sorry...
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Comments

  1. Janet Bianchini14 August 2011 at 08:11

    Hi Alicia

    Thanks for letting me know about your very interesting blog post on Pixton comics. I have just added it to my growing collection of Comics and Cartoons on Scoop.it!

    Best wishes

    janet

    ReplyDelete

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