5 fun ways to use blank comic strip templates in your class

Today we’re looking at five fun ways to use blank comic strip templates in your class.

Picture this. It’s 3.05 on a Wednesday afternoon. You have to finish work, get to your kid’s daycare, wrestle them into a car seat, and take them to a doctor’s appointment.

You have to be there at 3.45pm. You have 10 minutes to plan for tomorrow’s lessons.

teacher-planning-ten-minutes-to-plan- You’re always searching for fun activities. But they need to be easy to prepare and engaging. Bonus points if it’s something other than chalk and talk or taking notes because your kids are bored AF with those strategies.

You’d also like to give your students a chance to be creative. Because you know they’re sick of chalk and talk. You know they’re sick of taking notes. And you know they’re sick of five minute videos followed by a worksheet.

So what can you do? My suggestion, use blank comic strip templates in your class. How? There are lots of fun, easy, engaging ways to use blank comic book templates in your class. Today we’re going to look at five.

Blank comic strip template activity idea #1

You can use blank comic strip templates to get students to recount events or summarize. information.

For example, in ELA you can get students to review chapters of a novel or short stories. Or, they can show character information.

You can also get students to transform a text. For example, you could get them to change a poem, short story, or news article into a comic strip.

Using a blank comic strip in this way gives students the chance to be creative, but also to demonstrate their understanding of the events, characters, and other aspects of a text.

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In Social Studies, you can get students to do something similar and recount the series of events leading up to a major historical event or geographical phenomena.

Again, students get to show their understanding in a creative way and you get a quick, low-prep activity that students will engage with more than writing notes.

Activity idea #2

You can use blank comic strip templates to get students to recount or plan a process.

For example, in a science lesson, students could use a blank comic strip template to either recount or plan a scientific experiment.

This is great for students who have low written ability, because they can still show their understanding of the process without having to write out tons and tons of words.

Alternatively, if your student’s written ability is stronger, this is a great way for students to plan what they need to do, and then use that blank comic strip template to as a guide for when they’re writing their lab report..

You could use it in a similar way in hospitality or cooking. Students could use blank comic strip templates to write a recipe or create the mise en place for a multicourse meal.

Again, this is great for students who are slow writers or have low literacy because they can get their ideas down on paper without having to think of the words..

Blank comic strip template activity idea #3

Students can use a blank comic books template to plan a story or video

In ELA, students could use this to plan a short story or some other kind of creative writing.

Using a comic strip template would have an advantage over something like brainstorming, particularly for something like descriptive writing. That’s because in descriptive writing, students are wanting to give their reader a visual image in the readers mind.

And it’s far easier to do that by drawing pictures and using detail in the picture to plan what you’re going to write about rather than trying to write straight away.

In a subject such as media studies, students could use a blank comic strip template to plan a video with each box on the template representing one scene within a video.

This would cut down on the amount of time students would need to film and give them more time to edit their work.

Activity idea #4

You can also use a blank comic strip template as a one-pager assignment. What is a one pager assignment? Basically a one-pager assignment is a task that gets all the work done on one page.

Examples of one-pager assignments in ELA include ideas such as illustrated character biographies, creating a scene from a ‘silenced’ character, or writing the ‘backstory’ of a character that helps explain their motivations at a particular point in a text.

You can use one-pager assignments as an alternative to an essay or other analytical tasks. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not intellectually rigorous.

A one-pager assignment can be just as intellectually rigorous as a written assignment. This is especially true if students are needing to recall or explain details for aspects of the text such as character development, literary devices, the plot of the story, important quotes, or major themes within the text.

And if students are doing that all on one page, they’re still going to be creating a rigorous assessment piece. Even better, students can do a one pager on a book, but also a variety of other text types, such as a poem, a short story, or a visual text.

On top of that, one pager assignments gives creative students a chance to shine and lower-literacy students the chance to demonstrate their knowledge in a way that doesn’t rely solely on their written ability.

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Blank comic strip template activity idea #5

Finally, students can use a blank comic strip template to analyze or empathize with characters in a story. This could follow a similar set up to a one pager novel project, where students put their entire assessment on just one page.

One ways students can do that is to show why a character does something in a text. This type of task shows students’ inferential skills because it shows that students are thinking about why a character might be motivated to behave in a specific way.

Another option, where students can show their understanding of a character is to either create or explain a character’s backstory. Creating a backstory shows that students are having to notice details about a character and then use that within their comic strip assignment.

Another option is to ask students to create a prequel or sequel to scene for a text. Both of these enable a student to show you what they think about the characters without having to do a ton of writing.

Creating a prequel or a sequel scene for a text is showing students’ understanding of character development. This is because they have to show why the character has behaved in a certain way within a text.

Creating a backstory in a prequel scene enables students to infer what has happened before the text to make that character the way that they are.

And making a sequel scene for a text enables students to explain how the events in the story have changed the character in some way. By using a sequel scene, students can explain character development by showing the character behaving in a way that demonstrates their growth.

These are only a few starter ideas

These are just five fast, fun, easy, engaging ways to get your students to do something other than take notes or do worksheets. And they are just the begining.

One of the great things about blank comic strip templates is that they’re so versatile and can be used in many different ways, in many different subject areas, with students of different ages and abilities.

So you can plan your lessons quickly and make it to your kid’s doctor appointment on time without having to spend hours planning a lesson after your kid is asleep.

Because let’s face it, you’d rather be watching Netflix or escaping into that novel beckoning from your beside table.

Keen to try it out?

If you want a little one pager inspiration, click here for a free blank comic strip printable template you can use in class.

Love that freebie and want more?

Check out this blank comic strip printable template bundle with multiple comic strip formats.