Literature with a Comic Twist (Toondoo) (Shannon)

Before I begin, I have to say I was pretty stumped as to how we can actually look for tools available online to assess English Literature. It took me a while, and I had the pleasure of reading those found by my fellow classmates and, boy, I was amazed. So I decided to think a little out of the box and came up with using… Toondoo.

Basically, Toondoo is this online comic-creating tool that is free and customizable. There’s no need for the talent in drawing (yes, I’m one of those few bad at games like Sketch with Friends) - you can simply choose from the array of stock images available and modify them accordingly. Or, if you wish, you can even upload images of your own to use in your comic strips! All in all, a relatively hassle-free, easy-to-use, non-paying and fun-filled creative tool that we can use.

No, I'm not exactly very creative right now... but I promise I'll explore more!

So, Toondoo, this fantastic ICT tool that we can use to inject something different into our classroom teaching, or even to assess our students’ learning and understanding. As I dabbled away with this new plaything, I could envision the feasibility of incorporating it with our teaching of the prescribed literature texts. In fact, a few possibilities on how we can use them.

For starters, our students can use them to study the characterization(s) of the various character(s) in their texts. At its simplest, they would match their descriptions to what they are creating (for example, John is a huge boy with a black face, auburn-coloured hair and small eyes); moving beyond, students can even incorporate character traits into their imagination (maybe... how would a crafty old man with a penchant of stealing chocolates look like). This adds a visual edge to the texts and words that they are reading, and could possibly appeal to them just that bit more! 

Another thing we can do with ToonDoo is to task students with creating a comic strip that summarizes the gist of a particular chapter, or what is the most important episode in that chapter. Or perhaps they can even recreate a certain scene with imagined thought bubbles of conversations between characters that highlights one of the thematic concerns of the text. For texts with a language that is more difficult to grasp (read: Shakespeare), they could even translate certain portions of the text into a Singapore-version (the first thought I had was the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet… now where could they do that in Singapore…). 

Simply put, we can set these ‘questions’ into an assessment format - something like, create a three-panel comic strip using ToonDoo that explains the relationship between Jesse and Leslie in Chapter 3 of Bridge to Terabithia (the text that I had taught during my contract teaching days), or create a four-panel comic strip that highlights the theme of love in Romeo and Juliet. This can work both for individual and group work as well. 

There, a few possibilities that we can use ToonDoo for the class. I’m sure there’s many more ways we can utilize this free tool, given the creative geniuses that we, the English Literature teachers-to-be, possess. 

So go forth and indoctrinate our students with a love for literature!

P.S. I actually forgot to link Toondoo here!!!