Science Comics : the Periodic Table of Elements
by Jon Chad
Jon Chad’s Science Comics: The Periodic Table of Elements uses comics storytelling to introduce atoms, elements, and the patterns that organize the periodic table. Scientific explanations and visual examples help readers connect this seemingly complicated chart to the substances that make up their world. Although listed here as fiction and a picture book, it is best taught as a nonfiction science graphic novel, with selected passages and substantial scaffolding for younger elementary readers.
Big Idea
The periodic table is an organized way to understand the building blocks of matter, not simply a chart to memorize. Like scientists organizing information, comics creators arrange words and pictures to help readers notice patterns and understand complex ideas.
Discussion Questions
- 1.Before reading, what did you think the periodic table was for? Which explanation or image helped you think about it differently?
- 2.Why might scientists organize elements in a table instead of putting them in an alphabetical list? What can an element’s position help us investigate?
- 3.How do Chad’s pictures and words share the work of explaining science? Where would words alone leave you with questions?
- 4.Which part made you slow down, reread, or look closely? What made that pause helpful?
- 5.If you were making a comic about one element, what would you want readers to understand—and how would you keep an entertaining character from giving them an inaccurate scientific idea?
Lesson Plan
Learning Goals
- Recognize that elements are types of matter and that the periodic table organizes them in meaningful patterns.
- Identify a selected element by its name and chemical symbol, with older students also locating its atomic number.
- Use information from both illustrations and text to explain a scientific idea.
- Create a logically sequenced comic that combines accurate facts with purposeful visual pacing.
- Revise an explanation after a partner checks it for clarity and scientific accuracy.
Activity Steps
- 1.Explore a selected spread together for 8 minutes. Model how to follow the panels, speech balloons, captions, and diagrams; identify where the reading speeds up and where the science requires a pause.
- 2.Introduce a simplified periodic table for 7 minutes. Locate a few elements discussed in the reading and distinguish an element from an everyday object or compound containing it; for example, water contains hydrogen and oxygen but is not itself an element.
- 3.Choose and research for 7 minutes. Give pairs a teacher-checked fact card for an element such as carbon, oxygen, iron, or aluminum. Students record its name, symbol, and one accurate property or use.
- 4.Plan and draw for 15 minutes. Use four panels: an everyday hook, the element’s introduction, a scientific explanation, and a closing question. Include one larger image or quieter panel that invites readers to pause.
- 5.Partner-check and revise for 8 minutes. Partners identify the element, explain the main fact in their own words, and flag any confusing picture or claim. Display the comics beside the periodic table.
Standards Connections
- CCSS ELA RI.1.7: Use illustrations and details in a text to describe its key ideas; suitable for a supported K–2 image-and-text discussion.
- CCSS ELA RI.3.7: Use information from illustrations and words to demonstrate understanding of a text.
- CCSS ELA W.3.2: Write informative/explanatory texts that examine a topic and convey ideas clearly.
- CCSS ELA SL.3.1: Engage effectively in collaborative discussions, building on others’ ideas and expressing ideas clearly.
- NGSS 5-PS1-1: Develop a model to describe that matter is made of particles too small to be seen. The lesson supports this expectation through introductory models; naming elements alone does not fulfill it.
Printable Teacher’s Guide
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Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!
PART 2: PACE-WRITE-READ WORKSHOP In Jon Chad’s Science Comics: The Periodic Table of Elements, readers must do two kinds of reading: follow the comic and build a scientific understanding. This makes the book a useful mentor for pacing. A reader may move quickly through a short exchange, then linger over an atom model, an element symbol, or an explanation of a periodic-table pattern. Teach children that effective pacing is not always fast: writers and illustrators deliberately make room for thinking. Study a short, connected excerpt rather than assigning the entire book to every grade. Read it once for meaning, then reread to investigate how panel sequence, captions, dialogue, labels, and visual emphasis guide attention. Ask students to distinguish what the comic literally explains from what its imaginative presentation helps them picture. Scientific models and personified elements are useful teaching tools, but they are not literal pictures of how atoms look or behave. The workshop follows a simple cycle: notice a craft choice, explain its effect, try it in a small comic, and read the result aloud. K–2 students can dictate a single scientific sentence and sequence pictures; grades 3–5 can explain a relationship among elements, atoms, and familiar materials. The goal is not to imitate every feature of Chad’s book, but to use its visual explanations to make one accurate idea understandable and engaging.
| Element | How to notice or teach it in the novel |
|---|---|
| 1. Pacing | Compare how long it takes to read a conversational panel with how long it takes to interpret a scientific diagram in the selected excerpt. Ask students where Chad invites a quick read and where understanding requires a deliberate slowdown. |
| 2. Plot | Separate the comic’s narrative movement from its sequence of scientific ideas: what happens next is not always the same as what readers learn next. Map the excerpt as a question, an explanation, and a new understanding rather than forcing the entire book into a conventional fiction plot. |
| 3. Prosody | Read a speech balloon expressively, then read a scientific caption with clear phrasing and emphasis. Have students notice how stressing words such as 'element' or 'atom' can make an explanation easier to follow. |
| 4. Word | Collect a small vocabulary set from the reading, such as atom, element, symbol, and periodic. Discuss why a chemical symbol must be copied exactly, including capitalization, even when the surrounding comic uses playful language. |
| 5. Concept | Choose one central concept from the excerpt, such as elements being distinguished by their number of protons. Identify the words and images that develop it, then ask students to explain it without simply repeating the definition. |
| 6. Voice & Worldview | Notice how Chad’s comics presentation makes a technical subject approachable. Ask what this approach suggests about science: is it presented as a collection of facts to memorize, a set of patterns to investigate, or both? |
| 7. Point of View | Distinguish the voice speaking in a balloon from information supplied in a caption or diagram. Discuss how a character’s question can represent a reader’s uncertainty without making that character the source of every scientific fact. |
| 8. Setting & Place | Track shifts between recognizable objects and the microscopic world represented in the science illustrations. Explain that an atom diagram is a model, not a literal landscape or an image drawn to everyday scale. |
| 9. Original Characters | Study how figures in the selected sequence help deliver information through questions, reactions, or explanations. When students invent an element guide, require them to label imagined personality traits separately from real scientific properties. |
| 10. Dialogue | Find an exchange that introduces or clarifies a scientific idea. Invite students to try a question-and-answer pair in which the second balloon adds information instead of repeating the first. |
| 11. Details | Zoom in on element names, chemical symbols, and atomic numbers. Show that these small details carry scientific meaning and need a fact-check even when the artwork is fanciful. |
| 12. Descriptions | Compare what an illustration shows about a substance with what the accompanying text explains. Ask students which properties can be pictured directly and which require labels or explanation. |
| 13. Firsts | Examine the first introduction of a scientific term in your excerpt. Notice what support appears immediately—an example, a label, a picture, or a definition—and have students provide similar support when their element first appears. |
| 14. Immediacy & Engagement | Identify a panel that quickly draws students into the chemistry topic through a question, image, or reaction. Challenge them to open with a familiar connection, such as an aluminum can, rather than a long definition. |
| 15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures | Compare a moment presented as an exchange with a passage that compresses information into explanation. Discuss why a comic might briefly dramatize a question but summarize the background needed to answer it. |
| 16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise | Look for a gap between what a reader expects and what the science explains. Use that curiosity to frame a factual reveal, while making clear that an interesting question can create momentum without physical danger or a villain. |
| 17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger | Check whether your excerpt actually includes a historical look back, a prediction, or an unanswered question at its end; do not assume all three occur. If none appears, students can propose how one could introduce an element’s discovery or set up the next explanation. |
| 18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks | Read to a page or section boundary and predict which scientific question might come next. Then check how the following page extends, answers, or redirects that expectation. |
| 19. Pace & Creativity | Ask students to explain the same element fact in one panel and then in three. Compare which version gives readers enough time to understand and which version includes unnecessary repetition. |
| 20. Play | Use the book’s comics format as permission to experiment with speech balloons, expressive figures, and visual analogies. Establish the rule that playful presentation may change, but the element’s name, symbol, and scientific facts may not. |
| 21. Performance | Assign readers to balloons and captions, with another student describing essential visual information. Pause when an explanation depends on the artwork so listeners can see why a comic cannot always be understood through dialogue alone. |
| 22. Personality | Notice how expressions, gestures, and wording shape the personalities of figures in the comic. Students can give their element guide an expressive manner without claiming that real atoms have feelings or intentions. |
| 23. Humor | Invite students to identify a moment they find funny and explain whether the humor comes from words, pictures, or their combination. Ask whether that humor supports remembering the science or needs an additional clarification. |
| 24. Pause | Stop at a periodic-table image or atom model and allow silent looking before discussion. Teach students to include a comparable 'look closely' moment in their own comics. |
| 25. Poetry / Poetic Devices | Look for comparisons, sound patterns, or personification without treating the book as a poetry collection. Evaluate any comparison by asking both how it helps and where it stops accurately representing the science. |
| 26. Repetition | Track repeated terms and visual symbols across the excerpt. Discuss how seeing an element’s symbol more than once can reinforce recognition, while repeated explanation should add something useful. |
| 27. Rhythm | Read a sequence aloud while pointing to its panels, noticing the alternation between short statements and longer explanations. Have students vary panel content so their own comic includes both forward movement and thinking time. |
| 28. Punctuation | Compare how question marks, exclamation marks, and sentence endings affect a balloon’s delivery. Remind students that an exclamation mark adds emphasis but cannot substitute for explaining why a scientific fact matters. |
| 29. Questions | Collect questions that arise during the periodic-table explanations and sort them into those answered by the excerpt and those needing further research. Students can use one answerable question to drive their mini-comic. |
| 30. Compare-Contrast | Use two elements discussed in the reading to compare names, symbols, positions, or properties supported by the text. For younger learners, start with similarities and differences visible on their periodic-table cards. |
| 31. Objects | Connect an element to an everyday material, then check the relationship carefully. An aluminum can is a useful connection to aluminum, while water must be described as a compound containing hydrogen and oxygen—not as a single element. |
| 32. Threes | See whether a three-part grouping occurs naturally in the selected passage rather than claiming the book follows a fixed rule of three. As a writing experiment, students can introduce an element through three checked items: name, symbol, and one property or use. |
| 33. Lists | Compare an ordinary list of element names with their arrangement in the periodic table. Discuss how organization can communicate relationships that a simple list does not reveal. |
| 34. White Space & Negative Space | Examine the spaces between panels and around labels or balloons. Ask how separating information helps readers distinguish a scientific explanation from nearby artwork and avoid visual overload. |
| 35. Art & Graphics | Identify what a diagram, label, or table contributes that a character’s dialogue does not. Ask students to make their own drawing explain one fact rather than merely decorate the page. |
| 36. Interactives & Gamification | Turn the reading into a teacher-created element hunt: locate a name, match its symbol, and find supporting information. Present this as a classroom extension, not as a claim that the book contains a built-in game. |
| 37. Placement | Trace the intended reading path across one page, including balloon order and diagram labels. Students should test whether a partner encounters their comic’s question before its answer. |
| 38. Form | Discuss how this nonfiction graphic novel combines sequential art with informational explanation. Rewrite one short explanation as plain prose and compare what becomes clearer or harder without the visual sequence. |
| 39. Dummy | Have students make a rough four-panel mock-up before drawing finished art. Use placeholders for an element symbol, a factual diagram, and speech balloons so they can revise the explanation’s order cheaply and quickly. |
| 40. Passion | Ask students which element or scientific question the reading makes them want to investigate further. Let that curiosity guide their topic choice while emphasizing that enthusiasm becomes useful science communication through careful evidence. |
Pace-Write It!
PACE-WRITE-IT! — One Element, One Pause In this 20-minute workshop, students create a three-panel comic that teaches one checked fact about an element from the reading. Provide paper, pencils, a periodic table, and teacher-prepared fact cards. Minutes 0–3: Reread a short sequence from Chad’s book. Identify one place where the words move readers forward and one image or explanation that rewards slower looking. Minutes 3–6: Choose an element and verify its name, symbol, and one fact. Possible cards include aluminum—Al—used in beverage cans; oxygen—O—one of the elements in water; or carbon—C—an element found in graphite. Explain that familiar objects may contain other materials too. Minutes 6–13: Draft three panels: (1) a familiar object or question that hooks the reader; (2) a larger, clearly labeled image explaining the element connection; and (3) a brief answer or closing observation. Make panel 2 the deliberate pause, with less dialogue and more explanatory visual space. Minutes 13–17: Partners read the comics aloud, pointing to the pictures. Each partner identifies the element, states the fact learned, and marks any place where the reading order or scientific relationship is unclear. Minutes 17–20: Revise one pacing choice and one factual or clarity detail. K–2 students may dictate their captions and use a teacher-supplied symbol; grades 3–5 add a sentence explaining whether their everyday example is the element itself or a material containing it. Finish by sharing how the pause helped the reader understand.
Classroom Activities
Element Spotlight: A Four-Panel Science Comic
Students create a four-panel comic introducing one element featured in the book. Using Chad’s combination of scientific explanation and visual storytelling as a mentor, they move from an everyday connection to an element’s identity, a carefully checked fact, and a closing question. K–2 students draw and dictate with teacher-provided facts; grades 3–5 add an accurate distinction between an element and a compound that contains it.
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