Co-Design a TrueFiktion Comic Book
Studies show that drawing on learners’ background knowledge shapes comprehension. Allowing students to inform the stories they will learn from promotes higher engagement and helps them find a new sense of agency through authentic representation.
Our process engages your students in the co-design of a comic book that tells a local story with national importance.
Testimonials
— Abigail Henry, history teach at Mastery Charter School
— Molly Mitchell, historian, University of New Orleans
— Abigail Henry, history teach at Mastery Charter School
— Molly Mitchell, historian, University of New Orleans
— Samuel, High School History Teacher
Students get insight into current social issues by following the stories of fictional characters who demonstrate agency in dealing with racial, gender, and socioeconomic challenges in their community.
We collaborate with illustrators to produce engaging, high-quality visuals highlighting the humanity and dignity of marginalized people from your community.
We will consult local sources and subject-matter experts to make the content hyper-relevant to your students.
We create a workbook with inquiry-based exercises designed to help students use primary and secondary sources to dig deeper into their local history.
It's not always easy to bring untold historical narratives to the classroom. Including students and teachers in co-creating a diverse inclusive historical comic book will help foster enthusiasm and buy-in from the broader community.
Teachers will learn strategies for using comics to teach complex historical narratives. They’ll also learn how to seamlessly integrate primary sources into history lessons and use culturally responsive comics. Teachers will review a case study on teaching the untold stories of marginalized groups in a social studies classroom and find opportunities to test C3 Standards and SEL competencies.
Key features include:
Comprehensive training on using comics in an educational setting
Case study analysis on applying culturally responsive teaching practices
Tools and techniques for making history more engaging and relatable
Teachers will learn how to select local historical events that allow for inclusive, culturally responsive learning experiences. Throughout the workshop, teachers will discuss which historical moments to include in the curriculum and develop perspectives on selecting culturally responses historical moments.
Key features include:
Framework for selecting culturally responsive narratives
Brainstorming sessions to select impactful moments in history
Guidance on creating content that centers local stories and marginalized communities
In this train-the-trainer workshop, teachers will learn how to incorporate design thinking into their history lessons. Then, teachers will give the same workshop to their students so they use their agency, creativity, and problem-solving skills to help design their history learning experience.
Key features include:
Introduction to human-centered design practices
Training on conducting design thinking workshops
Guidance on gathering and implementing student feedback
Teachers will now incorporate their students’ feedback into a culturally inclusive local history narrative. They’ll learn different techniques for integrating primary sources, key historical themes, and culturally responsive pedagogy into one story. Plus, they’ll see how to make informed, culturally sensitive design choices throughout the content development process.
Key features include:
Introduction to narrative storytelling frameworks and approaches
Methods for integrating historical themes into a narrative
Strategies for developing engaging, culturally responsive content
Teachers will learn to create a comic-based inquiry workbook. They’ll create engaging, thought-provoking questions designed to help students sharpen their analytical and critical thinking skills as they learn more about their local community’s rich history.
Key features include:
Training on using comic books to build inquiry units
Practice selecting resources for a culturally responsive inquiry
Guidance on implementing comic-based inquiries in the classroom
Your teachers will receive a class set of comics that they and their students created to learn history in a more engaging, culturally responsive way. You can easily integrate these comics into your local scope and sequence. Most of all, teachers will be equipped to integrate any TrueFiktion comic book into their history lesson plans.
Key features include:
Final comics based on co-designed content
Professional development on using co-designed resources in your community
Inquiry-based education is about actively investigating topics and concepts. Our co-designing workshops encourage your students to seek information, knowledge, and understanding by asking questions and engaging in systematic exploration and research.
Our process identifies local stories of national significance. Your local history will provide the backdrop to a TrueFiktion comic book that will feel highly relevant to your students.
We identify gaps in your history and social studies teaching material to see where our co-design process can make a difference for your school’s or district’s students.
We lead a workshop where students and teachers exercise creativity and empathy while ideating solutions for the lack of representation in their history materials.
We reach out to local historians, subject matter experts, and world-class artists and to make your local history come to life with engaging dialogue and beautiful images.
TrueFiktion focuses on whole child development through storytelling. Our historical comic books help your students develop their sense of empathy and prepare them to solve the problems of the future.
Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that emphasizes creativity and innovation. It involves empathizing with users, defining problems, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing, similar to human-centered design.
One TrueFiktion comic book takes six months to produce.
We can produce several comic books simultaneously, but we cannot shorten the process for one comic book and curriculum.
TrueFiktion's expertise lies in historical fiction comic books, specifically historio-metagraphics. It is important to note that we do not do autobiographical stories of well-known historical figures, such as Martin Luther King or Frederick Douglass. While these real people might appear in the comic, the story will focus on fictional characters who bring a local story of national significance to life.
The comic books we create always fulfill the following criteria:
• Stories not yet told in existing textbooks
• Are grounded in local primary sources
• Explain a phenomenon pertinent to U.S. history
• Show historically marginalized characters or communities having agency
• Have themes of resilience
• Are relevant to understanding current social issues
We use our GRR Framework to ensure our stories show people from marginalized groups having agency in history.
The cost depends on how many books we are doing and whether co-creation is part of a more extensive curriculum and professional development project. The cost also depends on how involved we are in the production from a co-design experience. We can provide a quote based on your specific objectives.
We are a design-thinking-led company. Content will be made with our design frameworks derived from interviews with students, teachers, and local community leaders. If we conduct a co-creation pilot, we will use our frameworks and design thinking workshops with participants to guide the design of the comics.
The design of our book follows a specific production methodology. We will work to do a co-designed book custom to your local context. However, the book's structure will be the same as our existing products and is conceived to easily introduce culturally responsive teaching and innovative pedagogy in your classrooms.
At a minimum, we engage in creation projects once there is a scope and sequence audit, a series of professional developments on methods and resources, or a curriculum pilot with a school. There have been a couple of exceptions, but this is on a case-by-case basis.
The sooner you get in touch, the sooner we can evaluate your needs and get you a quote and projected timeline for your comic book.
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