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Maus:
by Art Spiegelman
During-reading
Strategy: Think-Aloud
The purpose of this activity is to demystify the process
of reading a graphic novel, or a text in general.
I will make overhead copies of the first several pages
of the text, and then I will use a pen or my finger to
show the students where my gaze is directed as I read
the pages and text. As I do this, I will
periodically pause and "talk to myself" about what I'm
reading.
For instance, I might say something about the first
couple of pages, such as: "Ah, I see the date up here in
the corner, so this must be a flashback or a memory or
something." or "Art Spiegelman is the author, and that
character's name is 'Artie.' Maybe it's his
childhood nickname... the date would be about right for
him to be a kid." I will even put in some really
obvious things for those who are not familiar with comic
books, like: "The text in a square box is the author
speaking, like a voice-over narrator in a movie, while
the rounded bubbles are actually character's speech."
By moving my pen along to show the conventional
left-right and top-bottom sequence of the pages, I will
be modeling how to read a graphic novel. More than
that, however, I'm also letting people know that they
should be asking these sorts of questions when they read
a text. Once I've done this for a few minutes,
I'll allow the students to volunteer and demonstrate how
they read the panels and what they notice, which shows
my respect for those with graphic novel literacy
(something that is too rarely addressed in school).
Click the link below to
see a formal lesson plan for this activity. The
document is available in either Adobe Acrobat or
Microsoft Word formats.
Think-Aloud Lesson Plan
or [MS
Word]
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Literacy
Philosophy
