Benefits of using cartoons in the classroom

• Encourages students to be creative and, fosters the transformation of Poetry and Short Stories into Cartoons, thus creating multiple versions of that same story.

• Encourages students to concentrate on big ideas, and evaluate how multiple or even small details contribute to a broader picture.

• Creation of a daily Journal of new ideas and experiences in learning.

Websites that are used to create Cartoons:

• Witty Comics allows you to create a comic strip with 2 pre-drawn characters, a background and dialogue boxes.

• Comic Creator uses versatile tools to choose backgrounds, characters, props and compose dialogue.

• Make Beliefs Comix helps you create and print simple comics by adding characters, objects, scenes, speech bubbles and panel prompts.

Benefits of using cartoons in the classroom

• Cartoons appeal to students’ intrinsic motivation because it may be more fun for students to share and review (Teaching with Cartoon, n.d.). Therefore, it makes them want to interact with it.

• Cartooning may help students retain information because it uses both words and pictures (dual coding theory).

• Cartooning encourages students to concentrate on big ideas and to evaluate how certain details contribute to the broader picture (Teaching with Cartoon, n.d.).

Examples of how it can be used in the teaching and learning process

• Teachers can ask students to create cartoons based on the topic they are doing in class.

• Teachers can use cartoons to create a digital story that can be projected during class time or sent to the students.

• Teachers can create learning activity that combines words and visuals, and their students to experiment with cartoon and comic strip drawings by collaborating to create a short, humorous story, with at least one main character who performs an action (Rodrigues, 2017).

English Language Lesson

If a teacher wants to find a creative way to teach types of sentences, the teacher can ask students to create a comic strip using cartoons. The teacher can first instruct students to create a script, however, the dialogue should include three different types of sentences - Simple, compound an complex. The teacher will then instruct students to create a comic strip with different pictures and characters.