Graphic novels-The reading of the future?

When is it appropriate to bring graphic novels into the classroom (what age group)?

 

Gene Yang presents a new idea to educators- using graphic novels in your classroom. He defines a graphic novel as any “thick comic book”, many teachers might think why would I ever use a comic book in my classroom? Or at least that’s what I thought before I read the article and looked at his website. Yang describes graphic novels as a “part of a growing effort to cast the comics medium in a new, more literary light, apart from the genres usually associated with it”. Meaning that we, as classroom teachers, should use graphic novels to increase literary interest in our classrooms. Graphic novels are beneficial to students because they are visual, this doesn’t only support students who are visual learners because with all the media students are exposed to today, they are much more likely to connect the reading to their life experiences if they use a reading that is visual. Yang talks about how “graphic novels bridge the gap between media we watch and media we read”. I think this is crucial to our students because with today’s technology students are constantly exposed to visual media and watching media rather than reading it. By bridging these two, students can easily make connections and are more likely to comprehend the readings. Another positive aspect about graphic novels that Yang describes is that “graphic novels have a visual permanence to them”. Meaning students can go back to a page if they got lost or did not quite understand the content, while in a lesson students can’t re-wind what their teacher just said if they did not quite understood it.