Comic Character Development

At my school we are working on using a new character development curriculum which has us integrate character development lessons into our present content curriculum. We took an entire day of professional development at the beginning of the year to learn about how to do this. I will be the first to admit, I HATE doing new stuff because I'm always swamped with work as it is. Working on goals, looking at data to guide my instruction, teaching, grading, etc, etc. I have taken the time to use one of the handouts and suggestions that was given and I was rather proud of myself for having done so. One of the other things I've been doing is working character development discussions into my weekly comic warm-ups.

A little background on the comic warm-ups:
This past summer during one of my master's courses, I noticed my professor using comics occasionally in his instruction. I always have loved it when professors or teachers use comics during their instruction. They are funny, they help to drive the point home, and it just lightens up the mood of the class. After the weekend with that professor I started looking closer at comic strips and picking ones out that I might be able to use in school. I made a goal to have a 'comic of the week.' I would post the comic on my classroom website for the week, and sometime during the week I'd link my warm-up question to the comic.

Well, I found some awesome comic strips to help with character development! Check this one out:

here are the questions I asked:

• How can words, even joking ones, be harmful?
• Who won this argument?
• Does it matter? Why or why not?

You can read some of the student's answers here:
3rd period
or here:
5th period

Some of them had some pretty insightful answers. I especially liked the students who said "the mom won because mom's always win." We had a good discussion in class about this comic and the effects of our remarks/comments to others.

or how about this one, that I used this week:

• How can our comments affect other people?
• Is this good or bad?
• Why?
  

I have not yet had the opportunity to read their responses to this week's warm-up, but I am sure they are good. I have enjoyed using comics in my instruction and I know they hook the students because when I change them at the beginning of the week on my wiki, I see the students lingering on the opening page a little longer to read the comic and see what it is about. Then, we are able to engage in a more in-depth discussion about the comic when the time comes for that to happen. (they certainly enjoy the comics more than they do the current event articles I post for them once a week)