4B Kids are Singing About “Toons”
As a culminating activity at
the end of this week’s reading selection, A Peddler’s Dream, fourth graders got to make comic strips of the story on the Internet. They used a simple but powerful tool called Make Beliefs Comix to demonstrate their understanding of plot and to retell the story. Both are very important reading skills that are tested on the State Reading Assessment. Kids had a real ball with this assignment.
Several students have told me that they’ve used this site at home since I introduced them to it on Thursday. It’s a wonderful way to get kids to practice writing and to think of writing and story telling as fun activities. Of course that ends up improving all their communication skills as well.
Here is an article about some other comic building sites with links to the sites. They all have their pluses and minuses. I chose Make Beliefs Comix because it was simple and had a wide variety of characters and effects. The down side is that you can’t save it. You have to complete it in one sitting, then print. You might want your child to explore the other sites to see which ones they like the best.
