Week 1: Tigers Comic Tips

Tips for reading instruction using our comic!

Wether you are working with pre-readers, emergent readers, or more fluent readers our comics can help support instruction!  Read on for grade level specific tips for using this week's comic.  Of course, you have readers of many levels in your room so the grade levels are just a general guide.

PreK: Focus on distinguishing between pictures and words.

• Read the Pictures!  Before you read the comic to your students, have them read it to you!  Encourage students to "read" the pictures to tell a story.  What do they think is happening? 
• Where are the Words?  Give students a highlighter and one of the uncolored comic pages.  Challenge them to only color the places they see words!  Your speedy finishers might enjoy coloring the rest of the page with colored pencils giving you some time to support students who need help with this task.

Kindergarten: Focus on letters and sounds in the sound effects.

• Read it Again!  Challenge students to find panels where they see two sound effects that repeat such as "wag, wag " in the panel above.  The teacher touches and reads the first word, then students "read" the repeated word when the teacher touches it.  Panel nine provides a nice challenge with "ap, op, op, ap, op, op!"
• Smart Guesses  One important reading strategy is using context cues!  Some of the sound effects are tricky to read on their own, but when the picture is considered it gets much easier!  Challenge your students to guess the sound effect you touch after only giving them the beginning sound.  You might say, "What's this word near Curiosity Cat?  It starts with /p/ and she sure looks happy that Beth is petting her!  What's your smart guess?"  Chances are students will guess "purrr" with ease.  Try it for "grrrr" and "sniff" too!
• Special Sound Effects  Let students know that some sound effects will be used again and again.  Whenever Curiosity Cat uses her Omni Glasses they'll see "pip."  When Data Dog runs fast they'll see "zoom" and when he stops they'll see "pop."  Be on the look out for these words next time!

Grade 1: Focus on speech bubbles and reading sound effects.

• Word Warm-up!  This time of year many first graders need a review of some basic reading skills.  Many of our sound effects are CVC words.  Before jumping into reading the whole comic, challenge students to read all the sound effects aloud.  Make it fun!  No reading robots here, what do you think "nom, nom" should really sound like?
  
• Who Said That?  Four characters have speech and thought bubbles this week.  Make four teams for a choral reading activity.  When you touch Beth's speech bubble, "Team Beth" can read what she said.  This works best with mixed ability teams so strong readers can support their peers for success!  As the teacher, YOU get to read the text panels and be the narrator!

Grade 2: Focus on text panels and bigger words.

• What Word? Prior to reading, ask students to scan the comic for words that look tricky!  Words like Thailand, Pleistocene (ply-stuh-seen) and superpowers might look daunting at first.  Take a moment and ask students what reading strategies they might use to read these tricky words.  Do the parenthetical pronunciation guides help?  Can they break the word into smaller parts?  Unpacking the tricky words ahead of time makes the subsequent reading more fun and fluent!
• Punctuation Power!  Challenge students to color code end punctuation.  You can do this on a printed or projected comic.  Try making all the periods red like a stop sign.  Ask your students to decide what other colors to use.  Commas might be yellow as a reminder to slow down.  Could question marks be a mysterious green or blue?  Perhaps purple feels exciting and will be your class color for exclamation points!  Students are more likely to read with expression after coding the punctuation.  :-)