How do you teach writing to young students in the 1st to 3rd grade range? Use Owly and Wormy! Owly and Wormy is a series of graphic novels created by Andy Runton. The graphic novel series is about an Owl named Owly and his friend Wormy. Each story is completely wordless. Use these stories for prewriting and writing activities to naturally develop your student’s writing skills.
Prewriting Activity
Before starting paragraph writing using Owly and Wormy, engage in a prewriting activity with your students. Have students volunteer vocabulary words they could use, add some of your own, and build a word list and even grammar suggestions. Have students discuss ways they could tell the story, offering how they would describe each picture.
Writing Activity
The first time you write an Owly and Wormy story, it should be directed by the teacher. Students volunteer suggestions on what to put, but the teacher produces the writing. The students copy along with the teacher as they are writing it. With a larger class, project the activity for the whole class to see.
After the first story, you should continue to do prewriting activities together, and then ask students to write a parapraph on their own.
If students are on the younger side, between 1st and 2nd grade, make 1 sentence = 1 picture a priority. This is incredibly important. The comic helps to demonstrate how organized thought flows on paper. It is natural to want to express an idea and then punctuate it with each picture. As writing skills develop, so can encouragement for adding more description/sentences to each picture.
A Happy Accident
You will not find a better way to introduce or develop paragraph writing than Owly and Wormy. I have used the graphic novel A Long Way Home in my classroom for 6+ years. We complete an Owly and Wormy story segment every 2 weeks or so. The students even end up producing a book by the end of the year.