Transcript
A third of the students at Mangere Bridge School identify as ethnically Pacific.
It's a group which is under represented in the three quarters of primary school students who are achieving at or above National Standards for writing in New Zealand.
The school brought in Mangere raised comic artist, Michel Mulipola, to help boost their skills.
'It is not about how flashy your artwork is or how good of an artist you are. If everything is confusing then you lose the reader so the emphasis for comic books is on storytelling making sure the reader can follow and that is how you hook them in. So a lot of people kind of think comics is superheroes and action, when in the end most of the time it is like two people talking and you have got to make two people talking like interesting and exciting and so that is when the storytelling element comes in."
Year Five student Ualesi Timoteo says she thought creating a comic was going to be really hard, but she found it fun.
Her group focused on a viral infection of the membranes that cover the brain and can develop quickly.
"So meningitis can spread by spreading germs like using a toothbrush and giving it to someone else, and so what me and my group did was we put a man in it and he was drinking out of a water bottle and was going to give it to a boy to drink it, but our superheroes came in and told him not to drink."
Odette Alaalatoa-Dale's story highlights the battle against sugar.
"My comic is about when sugar attacks and two superheroes come and get rid of the sugar."
And Samoan student Cuba Taratu wrote a comic book story about a measles apocalypse.
"The thing I liked about my comic was that I could do as much boxes as I can and I love to draw and I liked the way my comic turned out and how much people liked it."
Deputy Principal, Emma Alaalatoa-Dale says Cuba used to not want to write but that's all changed.
"Long story short, Cuba has come out the other end with a passion for writing and a passion for drawing and a passion for telling narratives."
Ms Alaalatoa-Dale says boys at her school are overrepresented in the 'below' level category for writing, so she wanted to try something new.
"If you keep doing what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got. So we sat down and tried to figure out how to unlock our boys and writing and so that is why we chose to plan this inquiry around comic books and being able to share a message of change through comics."
Emma Alaalatoa-Dale says students loved the comic strip project.
"Lena - "I like comics because they help other people when they're doing something wrong. You can read one [comic] and you'll know what to do that's right."
Jaylah- "My comics are fun to do is because you can get a message across and it's really fun."
Odette- "Doing comics inspires me to do other things and you can share it with other people."
Lucan- "What I enjoyed about making comics was making them do funny things and that like really brings out your creative mind."
Mark- "What I liked the best about comics is my imagination can go wild."
The school hopes other schools will adopt the idea to engage younger learners struggling with reading and writing.
