Top tips for teaching with manga

The Manga Shakespeare editorial team is led by a leading Shakespeare scholar and an educational editor. Advised by teachers and other educationalists, the team is expert in making serious works of literature more accessible.

Plays in the Manga Shakespeare series are abridged to allow teachers to focus on key scenes, while following Shakespeare’s text. Manga is a proven teaching tool and is widely used as an instruction medium in Japan. In the UK, use of manga and other new media has been endorsed by The Scottish Office NATE, The Reading Agency, and the Quality and Curriculum Authority in meeting the needs of students studying English.

1) Words and pictures: divide and conquer

Manga is a visual medium that combines images and words to create a narrative. With our resource pack, you can create your own simple IWB resources. By hiding the text in the bubbles, find out what your students understand just from the images and the way the panels are set out.

NB: Each Manga Shakespeare book begins with a colour section, which introduces each of the main characters. You will find a digital resource pack for each of these on www.prometheanplanet.com . You can use this on your IWB to identify each character, which can be referred to throughout to remind students how each character looks.

2) Pace yourself

Manga is a way of storytelling that can either linger on a moment for a whole page or cram lots of action into just a few pages. Exploit the pace at which manga moves to make class reading a fun and engaging activity that allows all students to reach key points in the play and maintain their grasp of the plot.

NB: Print out the relevant glossary from www.mangashakespeare.com for each member of the class or put it up on your IWB to make sure students understand every word of the abridged text.

3) Language! Manga! Action!

Each 208-page Manga Shakespeare has been specially abridged so that it focuses on the essential parts of the script, keeping the reader engaged. Use this abridgement to focus students on what made the cut and what landed on the cutting room floor.

In the manga: what made the cut were speeches that were turning points for the action, moments of character development and the most beautiful lines of prose.

Not in the manga:  what didn’t make the cut were many rhyming couplets, extended pieces of imagery, repetition and short exchanges between minor characters.

So you can look at the manga in two ways. Make the students focus on action and character by using the abridged text and images in the books and then use the abridged text as a starting point to examine short sections of the full text in detail using photocopies or your IWB.

4) The page is a stage

Each Manga Shakespeare artist has given their play an original setting, just like a Director would do in a theatre. Hamlet is set in a futuristic Denmark, Richard III is darkly gothic, Julius Caesar is set against a war-torn city.

Use the manga staging to begin discussions of character, staging and as a way of clarifying the main themes in the play by drawing parallels with other times and places.

5) Go create!

 Manga is a creative way to imagine stories and anyone can write and draw manga. All SelfMadeHero’s artists are young people living in the UK: so you might have the next Manga Shakespearean in your class, ready to be inspired by the Bard with a little help from manga.

Choose a few lines of dialogue from a scene you would like the students to concentrate on. Write these on the board in a speech bubble and then ask the students to work in groups to make a four panel manga. It is important that the narrative takes is divided between a few panels so that both the words and images help tell the story.

NB Make sure you choose dialogue or action scenes so that there is a clear starting point for the drawings. You can even take some of the abridged text from Manga Shakespeare and ask the students to produce an alternative version of the manga.

6) I’m in pieces

The page composition of the manga gives the reader clues as to the state of mind of the characters. It can also provide an instant visual sign that describes the nature of the action. Keep an eye out for jagged and irregularly-shaped panels, pages with no panels and those with lots of small panels. When you are aware that the page layout is important it becomes easier to understand the narrative. Your students may be better at this than you!

7) Chibi – you’ve got to be serious

Some manga artists use small, comically-drawn versions of their main characters at certain points in the play to denote that the character is speaking “tongue in cheek” or sometimes to show that he character is acting childishly. Chibis are also used to express the inner emotions of characters.

Why not ask your students to identify a humourous exchange in the play you are studying and then ask them to illustrate it using chibis to show the humour. This has the benefit of benefit of being a quick and easy exercise and can be explored through group work.

8) Make your own manga

There is a great piece of software called Comic Life that allows anyone to create simple sequential art and visual stories in a school computer lab. When used on an IWB in combination with a camera and the Manga Shakespeare resource packs you can create your own Manga Shakespeare as a class. The software isn’t free, but it isn’t expensive. You can find out more here: http://plasq.com/comiclife.

9) Get cross curricular, get dressed up and put on a manga

 Manga is a dramatic visual medium, which is why it is perfect for Shakespeare.

SelfMadeHero are running their first cosplay competition this October. Students aged 11 and over are invited to make costumes inspired by the Manga Shakespeare series and perform a short piece of Shakespeare at the UK’s biggest manga expo in London at the end of October 2008.

You don’t need to take part in the competition to get a project started at your school that involves the performing arts, art & design and English departments in creating a manga-inspired school performance of Shakespeare, complete with manga costume creation.

NB Why not focus on one of the Key Stage 3 scenes from Romeo & Juliet or The Tempest, which will be examined for the 2009 English SATs?

10) Read the Manga Shakespeare book!

The accompanying Manga Shakespeare books are perfect for using alongside these whiteboard resources, creating a mixed environment of learning materials to teach Shakespeare. Both US teachers and UK teachers can order the books using these online links.

** This handy guide can also be downloaded as a PDF **