Do you have the Walking Dead fans in your class?

Some of my Ss have tried to convince me several times that the Walking Dead story was cool. While they worked on giving their opinions on what they liked and didn’t like in their favorite tv series and creating posters, I heard and read their reasons for liking the ones I found gross and stupid and I gave mine. We discussed a bunch of things while having small talks. And while in a group you get a variety of opinions on the same subject, with one learner a small talk can lead to interesting discussions and we always learn new things. For me is the fact that I learn more and more about what my teens are up to and get a chance to understand why they like what they like. For them a chance to learn new vocabulary, pronunciation and shape their grammar as they get the support they need to communicate in English. Well, my intermediate 14-year-old teen L. is fully of love and energy to communicate in English and he is the reason why I ended up buying a comic book and exploring the zombie topic and its potential use as a learning tool.

About a month ago I ordered it (you can get a copy here or you can get the digital version on google play, I prefer the paper version as it easily circulate around the room) and last Tuesday L. asked me about it. When I got home though, I found the package and I was excited to start reading. I never liked gore and I really have a sensitive stomach to anything next to gross. So the comic book seemed like a good choice for a person like me. It wasn’t long before I started looking for apps on google play and I found couple of them that I would like to use if he was interested of course.Needless to say that all this excitement is due to the solid reasons they have given. L. makes all sound really cool when he talks about it and then I brought myself into it with his exciting view of the storyline and characters as we read today the author’s intro the discussion got deeper and comparison between the comic, the book and the tv show was inevitable.

Couple of Apps we used today:

The Walking Dead Yourself App

The Walking Dead Quiz App

As you can see I turned myself into a walker, but what was really great was L.’s comment when I offered him to do it himself. He replied that he’d be the survivor. Doesn’t this tell us something about how they feel and see things? I thought his point was really interesting and reminded me of what the author says in the intro to the comic series.

To me, the best zombie movies aren’t the splatter fests of gore and violence with goofy characters and tongue in cheek antics. Good zombie movies show us how messed up we are, they make us question our station in society… and our society’s station in the world. They show us gore and violence and all that cool stuff too… but there’s always an undercurrent of social commentary and thoughtfulness.

Robert Kirkman

L. is also my walking dead advisor. I just discovered today that the first season is all around the first volume. And he assured me that I will want to watch the tv show after reading it. So if you are not really interested in this kind of story, think again. Teens have a lot to say when we bring to the room what they are used to watch, read, listen and play. And by buying and using the apps, I am trying to educate myself not just to understand it from their perspective, but also to learn the language around this genre that I am not used to in order to be able to give them the support that they will need when they will give the try to talk/write about it. Even better create activities or use Apps that they can focus on the language. Many students asked me if we were going to watch the walking dead, I’m aware though that few of them are like me and hate gross stuff. The comic book is surely a great idea to bring in what they like. 😉

So don’t you give it a try!