Make Beliefs Comix - At MakeBeliefsComix.com children and adults can create their own comic strips online. They can select from 15 fun characters with different moods -- happy, sad, angry, worried – and write words for blank talk and thought balloons to make their characters talk and think. There also are story ideas and prompts to help users create graphic stories. This site can be used by educators to teach language, reading and writing skills, and also for students in English-as-a-Second-Language programs to facilitate self-expression and storytelling, as well as computer literacy.
Teacher's Guide to the Professional Cartoonists' Index - the Teachers' Guide features lesson plans for using editorial cartoons as a teaching tool in Social Sciences, Art, Journalism and English at all levels. Great for current events.
Newspapers in Education - Cartoons for the Classroom is a joint effort between the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and NIEonline to provide lesson plans based on political cartoons. Every other week a new set of pdf files is posted for teachers to download and print out for their classes. One page is a lesson on a specific topic, the other is a blank cartoon on that topic that students can use to test out their own captions before reading the lesson and answering the questions.
A popular feature of Cartoons for the Classroom is the Cartoon Analysis Worksheet
-- used by students to dissect and analyze political cartoons from
their own newspaper. The worksheet is a two-page pdf file that guides
students through the process of analyzing any political cartoon.
The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library - Lots of cool stuff here if you can visit Columbus, but the website is a terrific way to learn about comics.
Grammarman Comic - Grammarman solves the world's grammar problems in a series of entertaining cartoons designed for the EFL/ESL classroom. Plenty of free stuff.
Resources for teaching cartoon/comic drawing
Teachingcomics.org: A website from the National Association of Comic Art Educators. Just a ton of great lessons on drawing for kids of all ages. You could easily teach a whole series of lessons of comics with what's here. Highly recommended.
Famous Cartoonists' Course lessons: The Famous Cartoonists' Course was a mail order tutorial on drawing cartoons. This is where many famous cartoonists, like Charles Schulz, got their start. If you're looking to teach kids how to draw cartoons at any age, these are the lessons to use.
