Reading Between the Panels: Four Essential Lessons for Graphic Novel Readers in Grades 2-5

Estimated Read Time: 4-5 Minutes 

Our post on supporting graphic novel reading at home struck a chord with families and educators, and that enthusiasm mirrors much of what we hear in our work with educators. Schools and districts wanted to know how to bring this same thinking into the classroom, not just the living room. This post answers that request with four essential lessons that help teachers of grades 2-5 teach graphic novel reading with the same rigor they bring to traditional prose. 

Why Teach This Now?

Kids in this age range are often independent enough to choose their own books but still building the stamina and skill to read closely. Graphic novels meet them at exactly that point with high engagement, real content, and a form that rewards close attention once readers know what to look for. The scale of that engagement is notable: the number of kids who say they want to read graphic novels rose from 22 percent to 37 percent between 2018 and 2022, making it one of the fastest-growing book formats tracked by the Scholastic Kids & Family Reading Report (Scholastic, 2024). The same report has also found that 89 percent of kids agree that their favorite books are the ones they picked out themselves, and choice is exactly what draws so many students to graphic novels in the first place. Left untaught, though, many students may skim the pictures and read only the words, missing half the story. A few focused lessons change that.

What Graphic Novel Readers Need to Know

Reading a graphic novel draws on many of the same neural networks used to process language, not simply general image recognition (Cohn, 2013). Much of that work happens in the blank spaces between panels, called gutters, where a reader has to infer how much time has passed and what happened off the page. Students also need to read facial expressions, body language, and page layout as story information, and to notice when the words and the pictures are telling slightly different parts of the story. None of this is automatic. It has to be taught, the same way inference and text evidence are taught in prose.

Four Essential Lessons to Teach Graphic Novel Readers

1. Reading the gutter. Show students two consecutive panels and ask them to describe what happened in between. Model your own thinking first: what changed, how much time might have passed, what clues in the art tell you so. This is inference work, and framing it that way helps students transfer the skill to traditional prose as well.

2. Reading images as information. Pick a page where a character's face or body language carries information the text does not state outright. Ask students what the character is feeling and how they know. Extend this to page layout: a full-page splash panel signals that something significant is happening, while a small, tight panel can create urgency. Students who learn to read panel size as intentional design start noticing craft leading to a more nuanced understanding of the text, beyond the literal plot. 

3. Reading the text features of the form. Speech bubbles, thought bubbles, captions, and sound effects each carry a different kind of information, and students benefit from a shared vocabulary for naming them. Our free Graphic Novel Glossary works well as a ready-made anchor chart, giving students language to use in book talks and writing about reading.

4. Writing in the form. Once students can name what skilled graphic novel readers do, invite them to try it as writers. A simple three-panel comic, built around a small moment from their own lives or a scene from a book they are reading, asks students to apply sequencing, panel choice, and the balance between text and image that they have just learned to notice as readers. For students who want a hands-on starting point, is a free interactive tool that lets them build a one-panel cartoon or three-panel comic strip using ready-made characters, backgrounds, and speech bubbles. For a classroom mentor text on cartooning basics, by Ivan Brunetti, an Eisner Award winner, walks young readers through the craft step by step.

Discussion Prompts for the Classroom

These prompts are grouped by the kind of thinking they build, so a teacher can reach for the right one during a read-aloud, book club, or independent reading conference.

Reading Between the Panels

• "What do you think happened between these two panels? What makes you think that?"

• "How much time do you think passed here? What in the pictures makes you think that?"

• "What do you think the character did right after this panel ends?"

Unpacking Page Design

• "Why do you think the author made this panel take up the whole page?"

• "This panel is small and tight. Why might the author have made that choice?"

• "Look at how these panels are arranged. Why might the author have laid out the page this way?"

Understanding Character and Emotion

• "Look at this character's face. What are they feeling, and how do you know?"

• "Their words say one thing here. What does their face or body show that seems different?"

• "How would you draw this same character if they were feeling the opposite way?"

Synthesizing Text and Image 

• "The words say one thing here. What is the picture adding that the words don't say?"

• "If you had to describe what just happened using only the pictures, no words, what would you say?"

• "Is there a moment where the picture surprised you, even though you already read the words?"

Bring This Work to Your School

Teaching students to read visual information with this level of attention is part of the same comprehension and vocabulary work schools already prioritize. Our course, , teaches teams how to use reading data to design small group instruction that builds these same skills across a caseload of readers. For schools that want something built around graphic novels specifically, or any other literacy priority, our can be tailored to fit.

Listen and Learn More

For a related conversation with families and caregivers in mind, listen to , where staff developers Emily Butler Smith, Amanda Hartman, and Molly Picardi explore the research behind graphic novel reading and share book recommendations by genre and age. Pair it with our companion post, Graphic Novels Beyond the Classroom: Ideas for Supporting Families and Caregivers, to bring the same ideas home.

References

Cohn, N. (2013). The visual language of comics: Introduction to the structure and cognition of sequential images. Bloomsbury Academic.

Scholastic. (2024). Kids & family reading report (8th ed.). Scholastic Inc.