How to Draw Dr. Birdley

Here is the first installment in a how-to-guide to draw Dr. Birdley. This was suggested to me by Kristen, a student in my sixth period class. I know it would work better with pictures, so those are coming. But in the meantime, see if you can figure it out with these steps. This is how to draw him turned slightly to the right side of the paper (or papyrus, if that's what you're using.)

1. First, start with the eyes. Draw two circles...make the right one a skosh smoller.
2. Then, draw the curved line for the head. Use a few zig-zag lines for the feathers.
3. Then, draw the beak. Start near the eyes and go to the point of the beak.
4. Draw the mouth as part of the beak. (This is where the drawing would come in handy. Oh well!)
5. Draw the collar and bowtie.
6. Then, draw the jacket. Do the flaps on the sides and two pockets.
7. Don't forget the pads on the elbows for that professorly look!
8. Draw a line in the center of the shirt.
9. Draw the hands: three triangular fingers and a triangular thumb. They can be tricky.
10. Draw the belt. Black with a yellow buckle, if you are using color.
11. Draw the pants. Typically the legs are about as big as his upper body.
12. Finally, draw the shoes and maybe a bit of a shadow under him.

That's it! You should have a Birdley staring back at you...or more likely, into space. I'll have to put up some online pictures to go with this once I carve out a spare hour.

Birdley fans and a short book review

I'm psyched. I just got some glass from a neighboring teacher for testing the hardness of rocks. This will make for an awesome lab for next week in both classes - environmental science as well as physical science.
Two kids from last year came to my class and asked if they could sit in on some of my classes next week during their study hall to catch up on stuff they may have missed last year. What is going on??? They must be coming down with something. I didn't realize they had been entertained to this extent last year. Anyways it's nice to have some familiar faces from last year in the room. I had a similar incident the other day when half the soccer team came into my classroom asking for Birdley coupons. Now I know to come prepared with post-its so I can draw them up quickly.
On a completely unrelated note, I've been reading 'Best Mysteries of 2008' which has some great stories. This is the first edition I've read since 2000, and I wonder why I ever stopped. The stories are great - without fail there is something unexpected that completely twists the story on top of itself before you get to the end. Highly recommended!

Birdley in the Classroom

A top student of mine from last year stopped by and encouraged me to introduce Birdleys to other teachers. "Tell them to use the Birdleys," she said, "because they're GOOD." Perhaps it was the visual aspect, but it may also have been that we read the comics aloud alot, which helped get students get involved and remember the comics. This post will mainly introduce a few techniques I use in having students read the comics aloud.

Usually in my classes (grades 6 through 10, typically) I have had students volunteer to read the Birdley comics. Typically they don't need encouragement, but today I introduced it by saying "I need a few Hollywood actors to read the comic." This helped to draw in a few kids who may not otherwise volunteer.
Prior to the reading, I tell all the students, who have a copy of the comic in front of them, to read the comic and highlight key science words during the dramatic reading. The words may be properties, verbs, units, or anything else that I consider important. Sometimes the actors need a primer on what to read, so I go up to the actors and make sure they know their parts. I typically have them stay in their seats but they could also read in front of the class. I've found it's important to smooth things over if a kid makes mistakes, or especially if I make a mistake. As we read it, I also point to kids to cue them on their parts. Students have been pretty flexible about their parts - guys are often willing to play female birds. After the comic, I will ask them a few questions to spark discussion and then give them clues for answering the study questions, which I typically put on the back of the comic. Other resources, such as backgrounds, graphic organizers, and visual exercises, come into play as well during the unit.
If you have any strategies for implementing comics in the classroom, feel free to post a comment or send me an e-mail.

Boston, Book 9, and Birdley in Color

I will be going to a Zine convention in Boston this weekend to hear Marek Bennet, another teacher-cartoonist, speak about the use of cartoons in education. Other comic artists, including Colin Tenford and E.J. Barnes, are likely to appear at the convention. Should be a good time.

Between chasing my 3-year old around, book #9 is evolving. Its major include rocks, geologic time, volcanoes, and the role of microbes in shaping the biosphere. It's a lot to squeeze into 96 pages but Birdley will not disappoint. Source cartoons so far include the snottites from the Cueva de la Villa Luz in New Mexico, the three domains of life, intrusive & extrusive igneous rock, and fossil dating. For the latter cartoon I've been drawing some dinosaur fossils with my 3-year-old son, who has become increasingly involved with the Birdley business in recent weeks.

I've seen some cool Dr. Birdley "colorized" cartoons from students. It's always nice to see the characters in color, as I usually work in black and white since the comics need reproducibles. Although Birdley, Phyll, and Norman had their respective color schemes in place, it wasn't until I started doing the website that I had to seriously think about color schemes for Owelle, Clarissa, Lark, Don, and others. Incidentally, keep checking the http://www.birdleymedia.com/ site every so often for new characters and comics. They'll be coming soon.

M&Ms

It is Friday again, and what a great week it has been. A busy week, as you can tell by the eclectic title. Much has been accomplished both with classes and with Birdley book 9. Hang in there, earth science teachers, a couple Birdley Earth books should be coming soon. I've heard a few requests for the new link to the Birdley site and the link to the home page is the same as before: http://www.birdleymedia.com/. The other pages are different, though, so you may need to re-bookmark any that you have bookmarked. Especially useful to educators should be the "Elsewhere" section, which has a lot of cool links on microbiology, marine biology, astronomy, and other sciences. The "microbial soup" blog also has a few meditations on microbes that might serve as fun facts for a class with some bio in it.
Back in the classroom, the main thing in physical science this week has been teaching my students the scientific method by completing a week-long lab activity with them on M&Ms. Sure we peppered it with a quiz there and a comic there, but M&Ms were the main thing. Students in a group of 2 or 3 opened a bag of M&Ms in groups and sorted them by color. Upon quantifying the M&Ms, they made a bar graph illustrating the number of M&Ms for each color. On the second day they then converted them to percentages to construct a pie graph... and finally on the third day we averaged all the group data to achieve a class data set.
Today we checked back to see that we had all of our data and then set about to create comics on the scientific method. Many great characters were created, such as the Evil Pie Chart, the Mad Mouse, and Bahama Llama. The kids had to illustrate a science experiment while outlining the steps of the scientific method. To model the work, I improvised one of these comics on the spot using the overhead. Taking their ideas and putting them up there was a highlight for me - I underestimated the amount of fun you can have with an overhead. To guide their work they also had a rubric which called for the required elements:
-steps of the scientific method
-2-3 pieces of lab eqipment
-one data chart
-clear pictures and explanations.
We used a basic six panel template that I did up in Microsoft Word. I emphasize that you don't have to consider yourself an artist - clear stick figures are cool as well. If you try something like this, let me know how it works out for you.