Why Comic Books Are Excellent for Helping Kids Learn To Read

Why Comic Books Are Excellent for Helping Kids Learn To Read

Comic books encourage children to become readers. The attractiveness of comic books teaches children that reading is a good habit that is also rewarding. Many successful individuals started out reading or developed a love for reading through the use of comic books.
Comic books usually have few words but what they lack in words they make up for in pictures. These and other characteristics of comic books make them excellent choices for introducing your child to reading.

According to Josh Elder, the founder of Reading with Pictures, there are the “Three E’s of Comics”.

The first E is ENGAGEMENT.

Comics, comic books or comic strips are a combination of colorful images and drawings in chronological order with short dialogues. The reader, the child, is actively thinking of what goes on in with the image. He will look at the facial expressions, the background and the “body language” of the image. From there, he will connect the meaning of the images with the words written.

The second E is EFFICIENCY.

Comics are extremely compact. All the information about the story is summed up in a short amount of time. Making it an efficient teaching tool for children. Kids have the capacity to grasp the line of thought and content of the comics.

The third E is EFFECTIVENESS.

When kids decipher the story in comics, they process both the image and the words as one. As they recall what was in the comics and the learning process begins.

There is a neurological experiment termed as Dual-Coding Theory of Cognition. It proved that people manage scripts and pictures in different parts of the brain. However, if the words and imageries are paired together, it is easily remembered. Thus, children learn quicker and more accurately.

Important reasons for teaching your child to read using comic books include catering to their learning styles and age, teaching them life lessons, creating family bonding time and developing their artistic and literary skills.

Comic books cater to different learning styles.

Children have different learning styles. If your child is a verbal or linguistic learner, the words used in telling the story are ideal for them. Some comics have rhymes, which suit musical or rhythmic learners. The repeated use of panels and other elements establish a pattern in their minds and appeal to them.

We haven’t forgotten visual learners. Comic books are fantastic for that learning style in that pictures are used to tell a story.

These are just a few of the learning styles that comic books cater to. For whichever learning style that suits your child, there is a comic that will work.

Comics can be very beneficial to young kids who want to learn how to read. Even if they cannot process the letters yet, with their imagination they can follow the story based off of the images they see in the comics. By looking at the “emotions” of the pictures, the child can realize what is going. That is the beginning of his reading development, according to Robin Brenner of Scholastic.
Comic books are also great teaching tools for life lessons. Comic books are effective for delivering positive messages. There are comics about being helpful (saving the world), doing your best at a task and sticking with it until it is done. The desire to know how the story ends will encourage them to stick with the task of learning to read. Your child may wish to collect comics, if not, teach them entrepreneurial skills by having them trade in their comics for new ones or reselling them.
Comic books help you build a great bond with your children as you help them to read their favorite comic.
Reading comics together provides a good opportunity for your children to learn about teamwork with no better team member than you – the parent.

Try to make the environment as relaxed as possible. Read comics with them and watch them blossom not only in reading but also in life.

Comics are great for developing children’s artistic and literary skills. Comics will help your child to think critically, since most of the story is left up to the pictures coupled with imagination. You may even hear them beginning to using the “big words” they learned from their favorite superhero as their vocabulary increases. Your kids may also become better storytellers as reading comics open their minds to new methods of telling stories. Comic books are great for developing the little artist, journalist or even scientist.