How can I get my kiddo to read something besides comic books?
Well, the fast answer is 'you can't' and 'you shouldn't'. Are you trying to create a life-long reader? If your daughter can't put down her comic books, why not embrace them?!
By reading comics, your little reader will practice the following (Common Core) standards:
- asking and answering questions
- recounting stories
- describing how characters will react in a situation
- describing the overall structure of a story (beginning introduces and ending concludes a story)
- seeing different points of view of characters - including speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue
- using information gained from illustrations and words in a text to demonstrate an understanding of its characters, setting or plot
- practicing at her level, in order to read harder and more complex books
- making connections between his own life, and a character's life
- making connections between characters similarities and differences
- knowing and applying phonics
- reading with accuracy and fluency: read with purpose and understanding, read out loud with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression, uses context to confirm/self-correct word recognition and understanding (context here refers to both words and pictures)
- participating in collaborative conversations about grade level-texts (trust me, kids talk to kids about comics they are reading!)
- recounting and describing main ideas and details from a text
- telling or recounting a story with descriptive details
- demonstrating a command of conventions (collective nouns, irregular plurals, pronouns, past tense v. present tense, use adjectives and adverbs, use of commas, spelling, capitalization)
- comparing formal and informal uses of English
- determining/clarifying meaning of unknown and multi-meaning words
- understanding figurative language
- using words/phrases acquired and respond to texts
- using pictures to help the story along (if pictures are skipped, parts of the story line go missing, so it encourages attention to detail)
- inferring a character's response based on both words, and pictures - emotions shown on the faces of the characters
Are you a believer yet? Shall I go on…..?
On a recent morning walk to the bus stop with my 9 year old, comic-book-loving, son he exclaimed: "V (my 14 month old son) is just like Garfield. He eats all the time and sleeps all the time. Plus they're both kinda grumpy. I bet V will love lasagne when he tries it."
Text-to-life connection? Check! Inferring? Check! A 9-year-old boy who loves to read? Check! Are comic books considered 'reading' in our house? Absolutely!
