This is a very handy blog in which practically every post is a different type of resource for educators, for free!
The article “Create Picture Stories with Phrase.it” caught my eye. Phrase.it is a free site (no registration or e-mail required!) “slideshow” type website where you can add speech/text bubbles to the pictures you upload. Essentially, a comic strip tool with your pictures.
So students can, as the title of Byrne’s post says, create picture stories with it. Thinking about that for a while, I finally came up with an idea. Students in my classroom could create these and we could project them on the wall for the class to see, and the student improvises “character motifs” with simple percussion instruments. This was inspired by a class project that was presented in one of my music ed classes. As the “teacher” read the story of Little Red Riding Hood, the teams of students played their motifs for each character whenever they were featured in a scene. It was a really cool way to get musically involved in literature, so why not with comics? Students could do either character motifs or even sound effects to go along with their images.