Comic Strips Topic Guide for Teachers

Comic strips are a popular form of storytelling, that combine pictures with dialogue. Many comics are funny, but some authors use comic strips to tell serious stories, and for non-fiction.

Comic strips, or cartoons, are often published in newspapers and magazines.

Teach your children about comic strips using our handy topic guide!

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Teaching Ideas

Create an interactive comic using this lesson idea.
Use one of our teaching ideas for The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey.
Write a new comic strip adventure for a comic character, like Greg from Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or a superhero.
Create a comic strip based on a character from another type of story, such as a chapter book or a live-action film.
Use a short film without dialogue, such as Contre-Temps, and create a frame from a comic based on one of the scenes, with speech bubbles.
Choose a text written as a comic strip and rewrite it as a playscript.
Challenge children to complete these stories from the Cartoon Museum.

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Resources

Our Traditional Tales Pack includes resources for retelling tales in comic strips.

Use the Create a Comic project in our Home Learning Pack.
Retell a myth as a comic strip using the resources in our Myths and Legends Pack.
Download a comic strip template.
Use our Comic Strips Banner on your display board.
Download this superb Comics Activity Pack from the Reading Agency, which has recommendations for texts as well as activity ideas.

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Comic Strip Facts

Comic books published in English are read from left to right, while those published in Japanese (such as Manga) are read from right to left.
Rare old comics can be worth a lot of money – a copy of the first comic to feature Spider-Man sold at auction for $3,600,000 in 2021! The original price of the comic was just 12 cents.
A book that is written in the style of a comic is known as a graphic novel.
The Incredible Hulk was originally grey, but the printers had trouble getting the ink the right colour, and he ended up green.
Former US President Barack Obama is a huge Spider-Man fan and appeared in a Spider-Man story published just before his inauguration in 2009.

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