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Both of these articles focus on the impact that graphic novels have on student learning and teaching students how to read.  Cassady’s article states that wordless books enhance creativity, vocabulary, and language development for readers of all ages, at all stages of cognitive development, and in all content areas.  I believe this is very true because they allow a students mind to make up whatever they like and they can learn without being told what and how to learn.  I really good point comes from the Lyga article when she says that educationally speaking, graphic novels give the brain more of a workout per sentence that any other type of media.  If you think about it, this is very true.  With a picture book with words, the story is already created for you and the words direct what the reader is thinking.  Without words, however, the reader is the only influence on where they story will go and must decipher where they believe the story should go based on the illustrations.  The Teaching Reading article takes a good approach as to teaching rading through wordless picture books.  The teacher creates many stories with her students and all they have to go by are pictures.  These second graders create many stories as a class, then with partners, and eventually by themselves.  This techinique worked really well in her class and her school because the students read the stories to the principal and other grade levels.   These articles stress that graphic novels show students who have trouble reading that they can actually “read” and it gives them confidence to learn how to read actual words.  The story of 12 year old Robert who could not read is a true testament to how graphic novels can help a student learn to read and how they can offer some students a chance to participate without having to know written language.  Robert was able to disagree with the teacher and then create his own story based on his judgement.  A really cool approach helping students read, was the idea of sticking Post-It notes to the pictures and helping students write their own stories.  The post it notes helped students get their thoughts together, then they put them all together to create a story of their own based on their own understandings.  It’s amazing to see how two students can look at the same picture and come out with completely different stories with completely different languages.  Graphic novels allow students to create something that is very personal and share themselves to their classmates through their own eyes and background.

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