Teaching Literature with Comics – Performative Panelreadings in the Primary School

Submitted by: Caroline Wittig
Abstract: During the last years, multimodal stories such as comics and graphic novels have escaped from being trashy literature – their complex way of telling stories is explained several times in literary studies now. In contrast to this well-known field of how comics work, stands the unexplored field of how children read and understand comics. Additionally, teachers have very few information about how to use comics in literature education and, as a result, they do not often work with them in the classroom. Performative panel readings may be one way to include comics in school.
The qualitative-empirical study shall help to satisfy the need for research and focuses therefore on two purposes: First, to describe how children read and understand comics. This becomes visible, when they perform it as a scenic panel reading. In connection with the first purpose, the second aim is to show potentials of panel readings in the classroom for literary learning.
Data consists of video- and audiotapes in an intervention study in primary school. Children from a mixed-aged school class (grade one to four) performed in small groups a panel reading of 'Clay Giant’s Alive!' (Kuhl, 2015), a humoristic comic book about the golem. Therefore, the single pictures (panels) of the comic are shown one by one on a big screen, just like a film. In response to the panels, the children speak the different characters with roles distributed and set images and texts with their voice or simple instruments into sound. Panel readings change the narration form and are therefore kind of transformation processes (Dehn, 2014): As every medium tells with other story-telling resources, the children have to look very attentively to images and texts in the comic book. They have to choose elements they want to set into sound, and they have to find a solution for representing them. This complex process gives an insight into their subjective feelings, imaginations and understandings of the comic. By making texts and pictures audible, panel readings expand the performative potential of multimodal texts (Führer, 2017). As literary studies show, comics are not soundless and quiet, but have an acoustic side. You can find the acoustic side of comics in both, text and images: First, speech bubbles show spoken language that is close to conceptional orality (Koch & Oesterreicher, 1985). Second, onomatopoetic words represent different sounds in the story with typography and language. Third, even images represent sounds by showing noisy elements, actions, or spaces.
The comic book 'Clay giant’s Alive!' has been chosen for this panel reading performance. The story is a humoristic variant of Prague’s golem legend (including many intertextual and interpictorial references) that makes the mystical character of the golem subject of discussion.
I would like to show how children discuss and perform the panel reading. But writing the transcripts is very challenging – how to describe the children’s ‚play voices‘, while they read different characters, how to capture intonation and paraverbal aspects without being too subjective? In the audio-visual transcripts of their work, I want to find sequences with key incidents (Kroon & Sturm, 2007). They represent central elements in the comic and/or intensive interaction between the children about performing it.
The way of handling comics with panel readings in the classroom shall open new approaches to multimodal literature. I want to make visible, how children interpret the comic‘s discourse (text, images, typography) but also the comic‘s story (especially their understanding of the golem). Finally, I want to show potentials for literature education.

References:
Dehn, M. (2014): Visual Literacy, Imagination und Sprachbildung. In: J. Knopf, & U. Abraham (eds.) BilderBücher. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren, pp. 125-134.

Führer, C. (2017): Reading Panels. Zum performativen Potential multimodaler Texte. Informationen zur Deutschdidaktik, 3, pp. 66-74.

Koch, P. & Oesterreicher, W. (1985): Sprache der Nähe – Sprache der Distanz. Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Spannungsfeld von Sprachtheorie und Sprachgeschichte. In: F. von Gernert et al. (eds.): Romanistisches Jahrbuch. Berlin: De Gruyter (36), pp. 15–43.

Kroon, S. & Sturm, J. (2007): Key Incident Analysis and International Triangulation. In: W. Herrlitz, S. Ongstad, P.H. van de Ven (eds.): Research on mother tongue education in a comparative international perspective. Theoretical and methodological issues. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, pp. 99-118.

Kuhl, Anke (2015): Lehmriese lebt! Berlin: Reprodukt.
Lösener, H. (2010): Ist das literarische Lesen eine Kompetenz? Überlegungen zu einem kompetenzorientierten Lesemodell. In: H. von Laer (ed.): Was sollen unsere Kinder lernen? Zur politischen Diskussion nach den PISA-Studien. Berlin: LIT Verlag, pp. 41-56.