OER Project Graphic Biographies Guide
OER PROJECT GRAPHIC BIOGRAPHIES GUIDE OER Project graphic biographies are one-page comics that tell the stories of individuals. They help students put the humans back in human history, shifting from the larger scale of structures, systems, and processes of history to the smallest scale—that of an individual. Because the experience of an individual won’t necessarily match the global experience, these small stories give students evidence they can use to challenge the big historical narratives they’re learning in your class. Graphic biographies work well as closers to lessons, offering a quick reading that lets students reflect on what they’ve just learned with the addition of some new evidence at a smaller scale, one they’re more likely to identify with.How to Read Graphic BiographiesComics require students to build new literacy skills. Our Three-Step Reading for Graphic Biographies Tool can be used as a graphic companion for students as they read comics. It invites them to become cocreators as they complete the three-step reading they’ll need to understand and evaluate comics: First, observe; then, understand; and finally, connectTo help you introduce students to this tool and model this type of reading, we provide How to Read Comics. This activity guides students step-by-step through the three-step reading of one graphic biography. The activity introduces students to the basic elements of any comic, and demonstrates how to understand the main idea of a comic and connect it to what they’re learning in the course.
2Graphic Biographies GuideDetails from the Three-Step Reading for Graphic Biographies Introductory ActivityAll graphic biographies are multimodal. That means they’re presented in a format that combines the modes of art and text. Each graphic biography is carefully researched, and we’ve worked closely with the artist to ensure that the art, as well as the text, makes a historical argument. Teaching graphic biographies takes some skill, and you must pay deliberate attention to this new mode of reading. You can begin by watching Decode a Graphic Biography, a video that guides you step-by-step through strategies for finding meaning in this multimodal form.Using Graphic Biographies as Lesson ClosersGraphic biographies are presented in a couple of different ways in OER Project courses. Most commonly, a series of guiding questions accompany the biographies, just as with articles and videos. In these situations, students can respond to the questions, or use the Three-Step Reading for Graphic Biographies Tool, or do both for a deep analysis!We have also designed some openers and closers around graphic biographies. Because graphic biographies give students a chance to evaluate a narrative that might provide a different perspective on what they are learning, they make great lesson openers and closers. Click here to see a list of all the graphic biographies available in our courses.