Comics Uniting Nations aims to make the UN Sustainable Development Goals more accessible through comics. You can learn more about the partnership and its collaborators on their website. It looks like the project is inactive these days, but the site is still up with lots of comics free to download (see here).
How I’ve used these comics in EAL
Teaching-wise, I’ve only used this comic:
It’s good intro to the goals, and there’s so many ways you can use it in lessons. Examples:
- I mentioned it indirectly in my post on Seesaw activities, when I was using it for guided reading with Year 4. Lots of skills development and vocab-building based around some of the content basically.
- I also used it with Year 5 when they were doing a climate-related unit of inquiry. It helped some learners to choose a sustainable development goal to focus on for an exhibition-type project.
- I recommended it (and the comics on the site in general) to my Year 9 learners for extra-curricular reading, and some used it for the EAL homework tasks I shared a while back.
- I used it as an intro to topics that came up in Geography class, such as a unit on access to clean water (which linked to a few different SDGs). Sometimes that was ‘thank you very much! Most words on the keyword list for the first couple of lessons in one illustration. Perfect!
- I used it ad-hoc when certain topics came up in EAL class and needed a bit of unpacking. Again, a good context builder and a concise alternative to my rambles at times!
Anyway, there are about 20 comics to download, some in multiple languages, others occasionally with audio. The other ones I like (but haven’t used yet) are the ones illustrated by Denis Thomopoulos – great illustrator! Goats of Anarchy is particularly good (and is loosely based on a real goat).
Anyway, worth a look if you haven’t come across it before. If you do use it, which comic is your favourite and how do you use it in class?
All images copyright Comics Uniting Nations.
Categories: Lesson Ideas, other
ELT Planning 
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