Building Students' Resilience with Comics

Using Comics as a Wonderful Activity for Building Students' Resilience

I'd love to share with you a wonderful activity that builds students' resilience: a series of great videos based on comics that Jennifer shared with us during the workshops.

You can organize your lessons in different ways. I prefer to incorporate all aspects of language learning, such as listening, reading, writing, speaking, and the use of grammar and vocabulary. Here is the plan for my last lesson using the video "Ring! Yo?" by Chris Raschka:

Front work:

• Pre-listening activity without the text.
• Analysis of meanings (discussing what the text is about).

Individual work:

• Listening and recording what was heard.

Front work:

• Viewing the script, checking meanings, and writing down words.
• Reading with repetition of intonation after the author.

Pair/group work:

• Adding words to the missing character.
• Reading with expression for the class; the class must guess the situation.

Front work:

• Viewing the author's dialogue and discussing the morality, internal emotions of the characters, and resolving the situation.
• Reading aloud without audio.

By using various forms of activities and engaging all students, even weaker students can find success. We can also use videos with different themes that encourage our students to think and speak about various topics. This is why I believe such activities build resilience in students.

I use this approach when students lose motivation for learning English or feel tired after a long semester. I can add vocabulary or grammar materials to focus on specific needs, such as weak areas or moral aspects of the story, depending on the class and the challenges we face.