Professional Development for School Districts

Our Program

In addition to our site visits, Free Lunch Studios offers professional development opportunities for school districts, providing instruction to teachers on the use of comic related skills in their classrooms. The comprehensive program not only covers comic creation lessons for writing and illustrating of comics, it also features lesson plans and strategies for drawing on the body of Graphic Novel literature available to teachers and students.

With a history going back to the earliest cave paintings of pre-historic man on up through the introduction of the comic strip in America in the late 19th century, the comics medium offers a unique experience to both the creator and the appreciator of the hybrid of words and pictures. After a traumatic regression in the 1950s, the art-form has seen a dramatic resurgence in both popularity to the masses, and utility to the contemporary educator.

The Comic Construction Professional Development Program gives district teachers the tools, skills, and information necessary to read and create in the "language" of comics. With deep ties to both animation and video game production, the comics medium serves as a powerful bridge to the interests of students.

Inderdisciplinary 

The medium of comics and graphic novels lends itself very well to interdisciplinary and team teaching modules. Being a hybrid form of storytelling incorporating both words and pictures, as well as being a unique narrative delivery system, comics offers teachers a way to cover many concepts from both the visual arts and literacy spectra.

Learn to integrate comics themed lesson plans into the curriculum, and how to align the lessons with Core Curriculum standards in both Art and the Language Arts at each grade level.

Whether its language arts, visual arts, science, history, or any other academic discipline, Comic Construction can help you bring a different slant to the material and tap into different learning styles of students for an enhanced experience.

With the wide range of topics for published materials, virtually any unit can incorporate graphic novels. Capitalize on the popularity of the medium and engage students in new and different ways. Comic Construction Professional Development is a springboard to success using comics and graphic novels in the classroom.

Arts Integration

Visual storytelling is as old as history, with cave painting, hieroglyphics and medieval tapestries using it to recount a narrative to a wide, often illiterate audience.

With the rise of print and wide dissemination of information, comic strips and comic books opened up literature to consumers at every level of the socio-economic spectrum.

As a gateway to literature, research shows comics and graphic novels as highly successful and engaging to students.

Students from the earliest levels show a tremendous excitement towards drawing and cartooning. Using that energy and directing it toward literary conventions is a natural and popular progression for students.

Comic Construction Professional Development shows you how to incorporate the conventions of comics and visual storytelling into your lesson plans. As both a creative endeavor, as well as curriculum reinforcement, Comic Construction is a powerful tool for learning using arts integration.