Comic Creator

Here's a fun way to engage students in using technology to read, write, and illustrate, then communicate about it. In this lesson, students create a comic strip and provide constructive feedback for each other.

Use ReadWriteThink: Comic Creator. This online interactive site allows students to create a comic strip.  Students first input a title, subtitle, and author’s name. Second, they select the number of panels (one, two, three, or six). Next, they can choose from eight different backgrounds, such as a city, lake, and a room, 17 different characters, such as a cat, dog, goldfish, dinosaur, or baby, nine different word balloons or various onomatopoeic words, such as “Zzzzz,” “Shhhh,” and “Yeow,” and 20 props, including a book, laptop computer, boulder, castle, flying saucer, and a sun. Finally, they can type text into the word balloons. This can be done on a variety of topics and for numerous purposes. For example, they can make a comic strip playing out how they can reduce, reuse, and recycle to help the environment.

2. Students share their comic strip creations with others to give feedback. To help students develop a sense of how to provide constructive criticism. The way it works is that students first offer a piece of warm positive feedback, phrased such as “I liked…” or “I thought it was great when…” Then students offer a piece of cool constructive feedback; something they would change to improve the piece. The constructive comments “build up” the person and the work by thinking of how it could be even better. Sandwich feedback is when warm feedback is given, followed by cool feedback, then more warm feedback gain. Practicing constructive feedback helps students because they can apply it to other aspects of life. It teaches them to respectfully comment on each others’ work, which is part of their academic work as a listening and speaking standard. Communicating respectfully with other people in real life can help students develop empathy, which can be applied to digital citizenship, as well.



Warm feedback: “I like that the man shows that he’s frustrated with his hands in the air.”

Cool feedback: “I think it could be better if we could see what the man’s face looks like.”