In 2006, Lucy Friedman of The After School Corporation and Jane Quinn of the Children’s Aid Society, both founding members of CSAS, published a commentary piece in Education Week entitled “Science by Stealth.”
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
The Coalition for Science After SchoolLucy FriedmanJane Quinn
Pairing age-appropriate novels with thematic units on the civil rights movement and the presidential election allows one afterschool practitioner to bring democracy to life for inner-city middle school students.
Over the past three years, hundreds of community-based afterschool comic book clubs have been launched in cities across the United States. These clubs have drawn in thousands of underserved youths in grades 1–12. In these clubs, children plan, write, sketch, design, and produce original comic books and then publish and distribute their works for other children in the community to use as learning and motivational tools. This synthetic and analytic research project explores the dynamics, outcomes, and impacts of afterschool comic book clubs.
The article discusses the use of comics in teaching science. Sharing a comic before starting a class puts students in a more receptive mood for the lesson that follows. Comics can be used as attention-getters and critical thinking stimulants. The comics to use should be related to the lesson to be discussed. Comics can also be used to ease the pain of returning an exam to a class that has performed poorly. They can be used to illustrate or explain a concept. Be critical in choosing a comic series since only a few are explicitly scientific.