letting calvin and hobbes teach english
By Chad E. SmithChad E. Smith, M.Ed., a teacher at West Brook High School in Beaumont, Texas, taught in the East Harris County Coop in Daytown, Texas, when he wrote this article.
Many successful English teachers say that one of the most difficult aspects of teaching English is making it fun and interesting for the students. Finding applicable techniques that students can relate to and have fun doing so can often become quite a chore. Deaf and hard of hearing students especially may experience difficulties with reading and writing English. Grammatical structures that hearing students readily acquire often pose difficulty for them (Bochner, 1982).
Using cartoons can be a part of successful teaching, making English a class that students deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing really enjoy. Cartoons come in a variety of forms and clearly demonstrate that a picture is often worth a thousand words. Often cartoons contain written language, but even when they do not they can provide students with numerous possibilities for learning English. Humorous materials have been found to be highly motivational for improving language and literacy skills in students (Luckner & Humphries, 1990; Spector, 1992).
Gentile and McMillan (1978) insist that it is vital for reading programs to provide plenty of opportunities for students to experience life's comical and nonsensical characters and events. Cartoons allow students to acquire conversational skills and figurative language, and to creatively examine interpersonal relationships, while presenting students with an amusing aspect of life to study (Spector, 1992).
As a teacher of the deaf at a regional day school middle school, I regularly use cartoons to teach such topics as sentence construction, grammar, and parts of speech. Cartoons can also be used to teach such complex topics as sarcasm, metaphors, rhetorical questions, and idiomatic expressions. They can also be used as topics for paragraph writing. For students who have mastered grammatical structures, cartoons can be used as the basis for introducing various types of writing including exposition, and writing that requires sequencing, supposition, and compare and contrast techniques. I started using cartoons in the classroom after being unable to locate interesting and age-appropriate resources that matched the reading levels of my students. I started with cartoons that had little or no caption. Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, and Family Circus often appeared in my classroom as they contain messages that are obvious and easy for the students to understand. For students who have very limited written English abilities, teachers can use cartoons for vocabulary development, story-telling objectives, or simply drawing conclusions.
For example, in a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon in which Calvin, the human member of the combo, stands guiltily by a sink while a thoroughly soaked and irate woman approaches him, there are no words. I worked with students to create a written story based on the picture. First I constructed a list of vocabulary with the students based on what the students saw in the cartoon. I asked questions regarding what Calvin was doing, what his mother was doing, how Calvin got there, why his mother had a towel wrapped around her, and what her emotions were at the time. In all, students were required to use the vocabulary they knew and construct a written story of Calvin's particular adventure.
In another exercise, I worked with the speech pathologist to devise games to develop vocabulary and identify parts of English sentences. Working collaboratively, we constructed games that required students to identify as many objects within specific cartoons as possible using speech, signs, and writing. Students were divided into teams and required to write their vocabulary down within an allotted timeframe. A similar activity involved the same teams identifying as many different parts of speech within the cartoon as possible. We used four major categories, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, because those were the categories we had already discussed.
By using these types of activities, I was able to promote active learning through a medium in which students maintained active interest. I wanted to allow students to be creative, relaxed, and productive. I asked them to write sentence descriptions of what happened in each frame of a cartoon in which little or no text appeared. They were required to describe each aspect of the cartoon and draw conclusions. Some of the students were apprehensive at first, but over time they became more familiar with the process. They wrote more and they wrote more meaningfully. The idea was to keep the process simple while developing their creativity.
As the students wrote with greater ease and success, I began using the cartoons to teach sentence construction and grammar. In addition to writing descriptions, students had to check for sentence completion. Using the cartoons and the descriptions the students had written, I was able to use the students' own writing to teach nouns, verbs, and grammar. We also looked at topics such as subject-verb agreement, as well as article and preposition use. Over time, we were able to move into paragraph development. Students used their sentence descriptions for the body of the paragraph, then supplied an introduction and a conclusion. In order to vary the activities, I sometimes provided students with a cartoon and the body of the paragraph, and requested that they supply the introduction and the conclusion. Other times, I provided the introduction and conclusion, and the students were required to provide the body of the paragraph. Still later I was able to provide students with the entire paragraph written incorrectly, and the students had to reorganize the paragraph so that the sentences flowed in an order that was appropriate.
With the students' basic grammar skills developing, I used the cartoons to develop higher order thinking skills.
While the characters Calvin, the young human, and Hobbes, his imaginary Tiger sidekick, are immature by nature, they use a wide variety of language to which deaf students are seldom exposed. By using adult cartoons with characters with which the students could identify, I was able to teach such topics as sarcasm, rhetorical questions, and alliteration.
For example, in the cartoon in which Calvin returns from school to be attacked by Hobbes, students encounter the phrase " latchkey kid." While the cartoon provides little written text, it does provide the teacher an opportunity to teach an expression for which most deaf students are completely unfamiliar, as well as open the door to finding out why Calvin would have such a sarcastic expression. This single cartoon provides excellent opportunities to teach sequencing, description, supposition, and sarcasm. After providing exposure to cartoons, teachers can continue to spark student interest and creativity by giving students a cartoon with the text deleted. Allow students time to construct text for the cartoon. If the cartoon has been used regularly in class so that students are very familiar with the character, they can be required to construct a text that matches the character's personality and habits. Similarly, students can be given a cartoon with simply the final frame's text deleted and asked to supply a response that would be typical of the cartoon character.
One of the easiest ways to collect cartoons is to get a newspaper subscription for the classroom. Quite often local newspapers will provide teachers with free newspaper subscriptions throughout the school year. Book order clubs, such as Scholastic Arrow and Scholastic Tab, often offer comic books in their monthly catalogs. By ordering through such clubs, teachers can order many copies at discounted rates. One advantage to ordering volumes of books for students is that the teacher will be able to keep the books and reuse them for years to come.
Copying comics from the newspapers or books is only recommended with written permission from the publishing company. Once permission is received and copies have been made, sorting the cartoons by name or desired English structure is recommended. For example, a teacher can create a file for vocabulary and have that file contain only those cartoons to be used to teach vocabulary. There might be other files for sequencing, paragraph construction, or supposition.
Maintaining cartoon files is very important. Often cartoons will contain expressions or topics that may be related to current fads or events. Make sure that such cartoons are kept up to date so students can relate to them. Should you choose not to update the cartoons, be sure that you are able to explain the context behind the cartoons so the students are able to fully understand their humor.
It is important that the teacher be amused and excited about each of the cartoons used in the classroom. If the teacher does not show enthusiasm for a cartoon, the students will not generate such enthusiasm either. Motivate students by demonstrating that the given cartoon is worthwhile and something to be appreciated.
Using cartoons in the classroom can be rewarding and fun. Being creative in using cartoons to teach deaf and hard of hearing students English can be highly productive and successful. Cartoons can provide deaf and hard of hearing students with an appropriate medium to become effective and successful writers.BACK TO TOP
