Comic Strip Conversations

Comic Strip Conversations: Illustrated Interactions that Teach Conversation Skills to Students with Autism

Carol Gray combines stick-figures with “conversation symbols” to illustrate what people say and think during conversations. Showing what people are thinking reinforces that others have independent thoughts—a concept that spectrum children don’t intuitively understand. Children can also recognize that, although people say one thing, they may think something quite different—another concept foreign to “concrete-thinking” children. Children can draw their own “comic strips” to show what they are thinking and feeling about events or people. Different colors can represent different states of mind. These deceptively simple comic strips can reveal as well as convey quite a lot of substantive information.

The author delves into topics such as:

• What is a Comic Strip Conversation?
• The Comic Strip Symbols Dictionary
• Drawing “small talk”
• Drawing about a given situation
• Drawing about an upcoming situation
• Feelings and COLOR

Author(s): Carol Gray