Inspired by this blog post, 5th graders in Ms. Leavitt's Social Studies classes took a step back in time to retell the American Revolution as a Graphic Novel. Using a graphic novel from our newly upgraded Literacy Library called The Boston Tea Party as a model, her classes studied the features of a Graphic Novel.
Her students learned a new style of note-taking called Sketch-Noting to record their learning. The notes served as a reminder of what they needed to incorporate in their project. After the students learned about Graphic Novels, they were assigned an event in the American Revolution. They then began the research phase of the project, utilizing textbooks, websites, library books and their own interactive journals.
Students worked in small groups to summarize the main ideas on a flow chart. Next, they identified what would go into narrative boxes and how dialogue would support the story. Various storyboards were given to the student groups in order to plan out their Graphic Novel. Soon they were working on hand drawings for the panel layouts in the Book Creator app.
Each class created a series of nine historical events written in a Graphic Novel style and uploaded them to their teacher using Showbie. Students were challenged through each stage of this creative, collaborative project to retell history using their own drawings, voice, and style. Click on the pictures below to download the Revolutionary Retells for each class. Click here for the Graphic Novel rubric. Click here for the group work rubric.
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