Bellmore fourth-grade students at Winthrop Avenue School are thinking about storylines through the art form of cartooning. Under the direction of student teacher and former School of Visual Arts student David Shear, their story ideas reflect newspaper comic strips and are inspired by Calvin and Hobbs and Garfield.

“I wanted to bring my enthusiasm for cartooning to the classroom,” Mr. Shear said. “When creating a cartoon, the students must learn to be succinct, and in this case, draw out their story in just four panels.”

During the cartooning classes, the students learned first to think of a story visually. They then broke down the story into a sequence and wrote an accompanying script. Forming four panels on a sheet of paper, they then drew their corresponding pictures and accompanied each with word balloons to hold the script. Finally, the pictures within each panel were colored and the panel lines were highlighted.