Cromer and Clark (2007) noted that contemporary graphic novels’ imagery and first-person accounts differ from traditional historical narratives third person. Graphic novels have emerged as an ‘in demand’ format with today’s adolescents due to popular cable series like The Walking Dead and movies like V for Vendetta.Īccording to The Lexile Framework for Reading (2012) combining art and text helps engage struggling readers. Using graphic novels as instructional tools could promote engagement during literacy-based activities. Draper and Reidel (2011) explained that graphic novels engage middle school students by combining visual and verbal elements to bridge the gap between content from social studies and multimodal texts that students use outside of school. Serchay (2008) described graphic novels as nonfiction or fiction books that follow a similar format as comic books and typically tell a story from start to finish. Using graphic novels in middle school social studies classes is a successful way to invigorate instruction. Despite middle school students’ lack of motivation to read social studies textbooks, most adolescents are proficient in using an array of multimodal texts such as the movies, comics, and various internet sources (Draper & Reidel, 2011). Textbooks often struggle to not only illuminate the past, but they fail to use history to put contemporary issues into context. Loewen felt the problem was the format of social studies textbooks. Loewen (2008) pointed out that history is a collection of fascinating stories and suggested that telling the stories of the past could ignite the sense of wonderment in adolescent students that are absent in many students. Ogawa and Kusahara (2011) acknowledged that teachers often glean a significant part of their understanding of the social studies content from information in textbooks. Misco (2014) posited that the organization of social studies content must encourage the students to engage in reflective learning activities that they can connect to real world experiences. Many adolescent learners’ knowledge of the history comes from their social studies textbook. Waid, State University of New York (SUNY)-Oneonta

Using John Lewis’s March Graphic Novel Trilogy in Middle School

John lewis graphic novel trilogy