New Kid

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

Middle School Advice for Jordan

After reading Jerry Craft’s graphic novel about Jordan’s journey to become more confident in his new middle school, students create their own brief graphic narratives offering Jordan advice about how to feel happier and more confident in middle school.

Throughout New Kid, Jordan struggles to adjust to his new middle school. He must overcome several obstacles. Along the way, he learns about other people and himself. But what if instead of figuring all of this out on his own, he had a friend to offer him smart advice about how to adjust? Create your own graphic narrative in which Jordan receives some advice about how to feel happier and find confidence in middle school.

1. Before you start, make sure that you understand the basics of how graphic narratives are put together so that the art conveys messages to the reader just like the words do. You can use the resources below to make sure you know how to do this.

• This 3-minute video from the Bespectacled Librarian covers the basic elements of a graphic narrative.
• This 7-minute video by comic artist Palle Schmidt explains in more detail how to lay out comic pages.

2. Choose three different challenges that Jordan faces at school. Try to pick challenges that are in different sections of the story. Think about what advice you would give Jordan for overcoming these obstacles.

3. Decide what kind of character you will select to offer Jordan advice, and under what circumstances. Each time he faces a challenge, does a magical creature appear to offer some advice? Does an older student notice that he is struggling and take him aside to talk? Does Jordan find helpful online videos that explain how to handle each challenge he faces? You can use one of these suggestions or anything else that you can imagine.

4. On paper or using an online platform like Canva or Pixton, create a graphic narrative that:

• offers Jordan advice for facing three different challenges in his middle school.
• shows the reader what each obstacle is, how Jordan is affected by the obstacle, and what advice he should follow.
• uses panels, composition, color, and other elements of comic art to convey emphasis, tone, and characterization as well as the story’s action.

Teaching Suggestion: This project has three distinct stages: a learning phase (step 1), a planning phase (steps 2 and 3), and an execution phase (step 4). It may be helpful to lead students through each phase and give a predetermined number of minutes for completion. If time is short, consider allowing students to work on this project in small groups or asking students to create a single-page comic in which Jordan encounters and gets advice about one middle-school obstacle. For background information on the choices that comic artists make in order to convey meaning, the seminal book on the topic is Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. Check YouTube, where several educators have posted videos reading this book section by section.

Differentiation Suggestion: Because this project asks students to learn a new skill (understanding and applying the conventions of comic art) and then apply it creatively in a novel context, the cognitive load may be heavy for students with learning challenges. Consider offering some students the alternative of using what they learn in step 1 of this project to analyze a few pages of Craft’s novel. Scan a few pages into PDF form and then have students upload the PDFs into a program like Canva to annotate them with arrows and text. Guide students to explain how Craft uses panels, color, etc., to convey meaning. Other potential supports and modifications are shortening the project as described in the Teaching Suggestion above, offering a graphic organizer to help students organize their thoughts, or allowing students to respond in the form of an illustrated letter to Jordan.