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"Love Chester Comix for history. So much better than a dry textbook. The kids can remember the history better. And the comics mention details not often found in most history books." Pamela H., homeschooling parent |
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Archive for the ‘History Teacher’ Category
More teacher's guides for free
Written on Friday, July 23rd, 2010 [permanent link]Jump on over to http://www.chestercomix.com/teaching-guides to get the free pdf download of the teacher’s guides for my comix “First Americans,” “Revolutionary Rumblings,” and “War for Independence.”
These additions to the teacher’s area of the website mean almost all my comix now have free teacher’s guides here at Chester’s home on the web. (Because I’m finally running out of the printed versions — and am gaining back some closet space in my house!!) There are many other free teacher resources on the web, but I think the Chester Comix guides do quite well in comparison. Most of the other resources I see are completely text and skimpy on any material you would present directly to students. My guides are broken into distinct sections, have a lot of visuals and have material to directly help both teachers and their students.
Plus, they have quizzes!! I know, I know, the kids don’t like that. But I try hard to craft a light-but-firm tone with them so that these assessments aren’t as heavy as a full-blown standardized test practice but still give the students experience with those kinds of questions. (“Which of the following did Europeans NOT trade for West African gold?”)
These teacher’s guides are packed with the wisdom and work of a dozen real-world classroom teachers who helped me when Chester ran as a newspaper feature for five years. They taught me a lot, and I still hear their guiding voices every time I sit down to draw a new story to help more students.
And their teachers.
Tags: Chester the Crab, educational comics, teachers guide
Posted in History Teacher, literacy | 1 Comment »
Artist becomes the Editor!
Written on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 [permanent link]
I’m back in Richmond this week doing artist-in-residency work with 4th graders for the arts organization Young Audiences! This is my third school year of helping elementary students become authors over these 5-part workshops.
When I was in 4th grade I was copying “Peanuts” comic strips out of the newspaper, line by line. By 5th grade I was making my own little chicken-scratch comix by folding a regular piece of typing paper in half and drawing with an over-the-counter black felt pen. My Dad copied the original for me, and I sold the black and white copies to my friends for 25 cents.
I like helping the students today do MORE than I did. I push them to really structure their ideas and practice them through three full versions of their stories (a text rough draft, a thumbnail sketch version and a finished, colored version) — I sure didn’t do multiple drafts when I was drawing “Dyno-Man and the Army of Justice!!” The good news is that their ideas are worth that work. Today I edited stories about Harriet Tubman and John Henry building a freedom railroad to the MOON and about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington arguing about where to have lunch!
Tags: arts in education, Author's Purpose, Bentley Boyd, Chester the Crab, comic book, graphic novel, Richmond Public Schools
Posted in Author's Purpose, History Teacher | No Comments »
New state standards matches for Chester Comix
Written on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 [permanent link]See how my 27 comix match up with North Carolina’s social studies standards! http://www.chestercomix.com/standards-nc/
The background:
Chester the Crab was born in 1995 as a narrator for a short series of Earth Day comic strips in the Daily Press newspaper. He and I goofed around for a few years after that tackling such important subjects as: Which came first, crunchy or creamy peanut butter? But in 1999 the testing wave hitting the public schools was growing so big that the newspaper noticed and called together a roundtable of teachers to ask what we could do to help them.
“Make Chester tell stories linked to the state standards!”
I drew five years of Chester adventures with a pen in my right hand and the thick state standards document in my left. I built my stories from the ground up to cover the classroom material (key words in bold, timeline across the top of every page, lotsa maps . . .). Virginia’s Standards of Learning are pretty detailed, so it didn’t surprise me to find that most of my stories met standards in other states as well.
When I launched the Chester Comix business in 2003 to put his adventures in book form, I printed teacher’s guides with the matching standards on the back. But it wasn’t a great system: I couldn’t fit every state onto that list, and when a state tweaked its standards my printed list went out of date.
Now, finally, that idea has moved to this website. Click on the state standards box in the menu bar above and you’ll see a map of the U.S. Click on your state and see a grid of that state’s social studies curriculum and how Chester Comix can help teach it! Please let me know if I’m missing an important detail, or if you think other Chester titles apply. We can edit these grids as the classroom reality changes!
(PS – creamy peanut butter came first)
Tags: Bentley Boyd, Chester Comix, Chester the Crab, North Carolina, state standards, Virginia Standards of Learning
Posted in History Teacher | No Comments »
