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The Covid-19 pandemic and the shift to remote learning greatly accelerated K-12 schools’ adoption and usage of ebooks. They’ve since become a trusted and crucial literacy tool, helping educators revitalize their curriculum with digital class sets and revolutionize the school library with diverse, future-ready digital collections.
With the overwhelming success of their ebook programmes, more and more schools are now branching out into additional digital formats to further engage students in reading. Here we’ll look at two popular digital formats that schools are embracing: magazines and comics.
Magazines
Schools are giving students more reasons to fall in love with reading with educational and entertaining digital magazines. The benefits of providing students access to a robust magazine collection are numerous. Popular juvenile/young adult magazine titles like Time for Kids, National Geographic for Kids, Highlights, New Scientist and Discover offer high-interest content that appeals to a wide range of student interests. Providing content to meet these unique interests can be a game-changer for engaging reluctant readers and open the door to a whole new world of learning.
Magazines also deliver information in accessible, bitesize pieces. This less-daunting presentation can be especially helpful for struggling readers and English language learners, giving them an inviting opportunity to practice and improve their skills.
Finally, magazines provide students with valuable experience reading informational non-fiction
text, and are an important tool for introducing current events discussion into the classroom. This all promotes critical media literacy skills, helping students to better ask questions about what they watch, hear and read.
Comics & Graphic Novels
For nearly 100 years, comics as we know them have been riveting readers around the world.
From the newspaper funny strips, to serialized superhero sagas, to manga and everything in
between, the popularity of comics is indisputable, extending across all genders, languages
and age groups.
Younger readers in particular have historically gravitated toward this medium, attracted to the colorful, welcoming pages and accessible storylines. So, it’s no surprise that in recent years, graphic novels – essentially long-form comics – have become increasingly popular with student readers of all grade levels and abilities. And with the advent of digitization, accessing these titles is often as simple as the swipe of a finger.
While graphic novels have always been an attractive option for leisure reading, educators are now beginning to understand how valuable they can be to their lesson plans as well. Lauded contemporary graphic novels like Jerry Craft’s Newbery Medal-winning New Kid and Victoria Jamieson’s Newbery Honor Book Roller Girl have helped redefine the genre and cement its legitimacy. And as one librarian notes, embracing this format is crucial in appealing to reluctant readers and English language learners.
An underrated benefit to digital graphic novels is that for students who might look at their required reading lists with dread, loaded with essentials like Shakespeare or Homer, the format is a great way to introduce key texts. In their original form, such books might present as dense and inscrutable, requiring constant consultation with footnotes and appendices.
However, a graphic novelization of a literary classic can provide critical visual context to help students follow the story more easily without significantly revising the text. For the reader who might hesitate in the face of a line such as “I fear too early, for my mind misgives; / Some consequence yet hanging in the stars, / Shall bitterly begin his fearful date,” (Romeo and Juliet 1.4.113-115), a graphic novel can help them connect the statement with the character, gain a sense of setting, and follow the action of the story. In turn, it becomes easier for the reader to interpret the essential meaning behind the 16th century vernacular. They can discern that what the character, Romeo, is truly saying is that he fears he’s making an ill-advised decision in attending a party at the Capulet home, one that will eventually lead to fatal consequences.
This is just one example. Numerous classic works are available in graphic novel form – and
most are available digitally, so they can function as a helpful supplement to classroom
texts without taking up any additional shelf space.
Next Steps
Ebooks have had a lasting, positive impact on K-12 education, and are here to stay. And as we’ve examined here, schools now have the opportunity to expand their digital collections with exciting formats to meet the reading and learning needs of the entire school community.