Help me give my students access to the graphic novel "March: Book One" by civil rights activist John Lewis. We will pair this graphic novel with Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail."
I teach intensive intensive 2 at a Title I public high school in Inverness, Florida. We are a high poverty school district, and we are growing in our numbers. However, we are working to reach each student and motivate them to reach their true potential as responsible and active members of our local and global communities. We strive to inspire our students to rise above the norm to become not just better students but better people.
I find myself constantly telling my students to rise above because we simply don't quit.
Many of my diverse students come to me at first with a general dislike of reading, usually related to English language barriers, comprehension, and fluency. I have been able to set aside an abundance of time for my students to read independently for pleasure using books from my classroom library. The most sought after books in my classroom are graphic novels. These graphic novels provide fun pictures and graphics that allow students to better grasp the content they are reading. Now, my previously reluctant readers tell me that they love Silent Sustained Reading and are always so excited to find their favorite graphic novel on my bookshelf.
My Project
I teach Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's (MLK) "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" in my 10th grade English classes. Many of the students that I teach are struggling readers who have a difficult time comprehending the language that MLK uses in his letter. I would like to build a classroom set of the graphic novel "March: Book One" by civil rights activist John Lewis to pair with "Letter From a Birmingham Jail."
Graphic novels are a fun medium to engage students with difficult content in a way that they are able to comprehend.
The exciting pictures and graphics allow English Language Learners and students with low comprehension to use context clues to decode what the text is saying. Speech bubbles and captions chunk the text to provide support for students with fluency difficulties. Graphic novels make text accessible for all students and there is nothing quite as exciting as seeing the joy in a child's face when they are able to read fluently and "get it."
I plan to pair "March: Book One" with "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" so that students can use the graphic novel to build the background knowledge and vocabulary needed to read MLK's letter successfully.
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