Science Comics : Bats

by Falynn Koch

Falynn Koch’s Science Comics: Bats: Learning to Fly follows an injured little brown bat into a wildlife rehabilitation setting, where its experiences introduce readers to the remarkable lives of bats. Combining a fictional animal-centered storyline with factual explanations, the graphic nonfiction book explores flight, echolocation, feeding, diversity, and conservation. Although listed here as fiction/picture book, it is best taught as informational comics with a narrative frame.

Big Idea

Understanding an animal’s needs and ecological roles can replace fear with curiosity and care. Writers and illustrators can make complex science accessible by controlling the pace of a story through dialogue, pictures, and carefully placed explanations.

Discussion Questions

1.How does following an injured little brown bat change the way we think about bats compared with reading a list of bat facts?
2.Which pictures or explanations help you understand echolocation? What can a comic show about sound that we cannot ordinarily see?
3.How do the book’s different bats challenge the idea that all bats look, eat, or behave alike?
4.Where does Koch slow down to explain something, and where does the comic seem to move quickly? How do those choices help you learn?
5.What might people do differently after learning about bats’ needs and roles in ecosystems? Which information from the book supports your ideas?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45–50 minutes📦 A copy of the book, paper or comic-panel templates, pencils, crayons or colored pencils, chart paper, and sticky notes

Learning Goals

Identify at least two accurate facts about little brown bats using information from the book.
Explain how panels, dialogue, and illustrations work together to communicate scientific information.
Create a logically sequenced comic that uses both a slowed-down moment and a compressed sequence.
Distinguish imagined animal speech from factual information about animal behavior.
Revise a comic after a partner identifies a confusing sequence or an unclear science explanation.

Activity Steps

1.Explore a selected sequence from the book together. Identify the injured little brown bat’s role in drawing readers into the science, and distinguish factual content from imagined speech.
2.Build a brief class fact bank about little brown bats: they are mammals, they eat insects, and they use echolocation. Explain that bats are not blind and that different bat species have different diets.
3.Model a six-panel plan: leave a roost; emit a call; show sound traveling; show an echo returning from an insect; approach the insect; summarize continued hunting. Clarify that the drawn sound marks represent something readers cannot normally see.
4.Have students draw and write their comics, giving extra panel space to the call-and-echo sequence. K–1 students may use three large panels, oral storytelling, and adult-scribed captions; older students can add explanatory captions and precise vocabulary.
5.Ask partners to read each comic, point to its slowest moment, and check one scientific claim against the class fact bank or book.
6.Invite students to revise one panel and share how their pacing choice helps a reader understand the bat’s experience.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS RI.1.7 and RI.2.7 — Use illustrations and text to describe or clarify key ideas in informational reading; select the grade-appropriate standard.
ELA: CCSS W.3.3b — Use dialogue and descriptions of actions, thoughts, and feelings to develop a fictionalized narrative based on accurate science.
ELA: CCSS SL.3.1 — Participate in collaborative discussions, building on others’ ideas and explaining one’s own.
Science: NGSS 1-LS1-1 — Supports investigation of how external animal parts help animals survive; an extension can connect bat wings or ears to a human design problem.
Science: NGSS 4-LS1-2 — Supports developing a model of how animals receive information through their senses and respond; echolocation provides a relevant example.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

Science Comics: Bats: Learning to Fly makes science approachable through the experience of an injured little brown bat. Its narrative frame gives readers someone to follow, while informational passages broaden the focus to bat biology and diversity. Students can study how Koch moves between a character’s immediate experience and a larger scientific explanation. The book’s imagined conversations are storytelling tools, not evidence that bats think or speak like people. In a Pace-Write-Read study, students examine pacing as the distribution of attention: which moments deserve several panels, which facts need a pause, and which events can be summarized quickly? A flight sequence can feel fast, yet a diagram or a series of panels can slow an invisible process such as echolocation enough for readers to understand it. Speech balloons, captions, panel boundaries, and page layout all help regulate that experience. Use short, selected sequences rather than assigning the whole book to every grade. Younger students can notice what their eyes follow and retell a sequence aloud; older students can explain how visual and verbal choices affect comprehension. After studying a model, students write a small comic, read it with a partner, and revise its pace so that scientific accuracy and engaging storytelling work together.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare a character-centered sequence with a fact-rich explanation about bat biology. Ask where readers move quickly and where they must pause to connect words, pictures, and scientific ideas.
2. Plot	Trace the injured little brown bat’s rehabilitation storyline separately from the science topics it introduces. Discuss how a character’s problem gives readers a reason to keep learning.
3. Prosody	Read a short exchange aloud with expression, then read an explanatory caption more deliberately. Discuss how oral phrasing can distinguish a character’s reaction from information readers need time to process.
4. Word	Examine a scientific term such as echolocation and the surrounding visual explanation. Have students introduce one precise word in their own comics without crowding the panel.
5. Concept	Use echolocation to show how one complex concept can be divided into manageable steps: a call, an encounter with an object, and a returning echo. Ask what readers must understand before the next step makes sense.
6. Voice & Worldview	Notice how the book invites curiosity about animals that people often fear. Ask students how its approachable voice supports a view of bats as diverse living creatures rather than monsters.
7. Point of View	Distinguish the bat-centered story experience from broader factual explanations. Discuss how following a vulnerable bat affects readers’ sympathy without making imagined animal speech a scientific fact.
8. Setting & Place	Compare the rehabilitation setting with the habitats discussed in the informational material. Ask how a setting can introduce questions about shelter, food, safety, and human contact.
9. Original Characters	Study how Koch gives a real kind of animal a readable personality. Students can create their own bat character while preserving species-specific traits rather than combining every bat adaptation into one animal.
10. Dialogue	Look for exchanges that make an explanation feel like a conversation. Have students test whether a short question-and-answer exchange explains echolocation more clearly than a crowded speech balloon.
11. Details	Notice details of bat ears, wings, and bodies in the illustrations. Ask students to choose one scientifically useful detail for their own comic rather than adding decoration alone.
12. Descriptions	Compare what the pictures describe with what captions explain. Encourage students to let drawings show a bat’s posture while words explain an invisible process or unfamiliar term.
13. Firsts	Examine the little brown bat’s introduction and the first appearance of an unfamiliar scientific idea. Ask what information a reader needs immediately and what can wait.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Discuss how beginning with a bat facing a problem creates an immediate reason to care. Students can open with a bat needing food or shelter instead of beginning with a general report.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Sort selected passages into scenes that unfold moment by moment and explanations that summarize broader information. Discuss how the narrative frame holds the science topics together.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Consider how the injured bat’s situation creates concern, while unfamiliar facts create surprise. Ask students to build interest through an unanswered question rather than through frightening or misleading claims about bats.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check a chosen passage for actual shifts in time or unresolved endings rather than assuming all three devices appear. As an extension, students can add a clearly signaled earlier event or end a panel with a question answered in the next.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Inspect what information appears just before and after a page turn or section break. Ask how those boundaries separate ideas, invite a prediction, or give readers a fresh start.
19. Pace & Creativity	Invite students to draw the same bat flight in one panel and in four panels. Compare how changing the amount of space changes attention without changing the basic scientific event.
20. Play	Notice the playful possibilities of expressive animal characters within factual comics. Let students invent a bat’s reaction to an echo while keeping the explanation of the echo accurate.
21. Performance	Have partners perform a short dialogue while a third student describes the visual action. Discuss which pauses help an audience understand the science.
22. Personality	Look at facial expressions, poses, and speech to infer the little brown bat’s attitude in a selected scene. Ask how those choices make a scientific subject feel like a character readers can follow.
23. Humor	Identify a moment students find funny and locate its source in the words, image, or their interaction. Discuss how humor can invite attention without turning an animal adaptation into misinformation.
24. Pause	Stop at a detailed scientific illustration and allow silent looking before discussion. Students can create a similar pause by giving an important diagram its own panel.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Although the book is not verse, students can investigate any sound words, comparisons, or patterned phrasing in a selected passage. They may try an original sound pattern in their own work, clearly treating it as a writing experiment rather than a quotation.
26. Repetition	Track how recurring characters and repeated scientific terms help readers stay oriented. Students can repeat a visual symbol for an outgoing call and a different one for its returning echo.
27. Rhythm	Read a short run of panels aloud and listen for the alternation between brief reactions and longer explanations. Have students vary panel and sentence lengths to avoid making every moment feel equally slow.
28. Punctuation	Inspect how punctuation shapes the delivery of a selected speech balloon. Students can revise a question, statement, or exclamation and explain how the change affects the bat’s voice.
29. Questions	Use the book’s treatment of bat biology to generate questions such as how a bat locates an insect in darkness. Students can place a question before an explanatory sequence so readers have a clear purpose for examining it.
30. Compare-Contrast	Use the book’s bat diversity to compare diets, body features, or ways of living. Emphasize that the insect-eating little brown bat does not represent the diet of every bat species.
31. Objects	Follow a concrete visual focus, such as an insect in an echolocation explanation. Ask how keeping that object visible helps readers connect a bat’s actions with a scientific process.
32. Threes	As a teaching lens, organize echolocation into three beats: send a call, receive an echo, respond. Explain that this is a student planning strategy, not a claim that Koch always structures information in threes.
33. Lists	Collect examples of bat foods or adaptations introduced in the book and organize them into a class list. Discuss when a list makes information easier to scan than a conversation would.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Inspect the gaps between panels and the space around words and figures. Ask how enough open space helps readers follow small details in a science explanation.
35. Art & Graphics	Study how illustrations make anatomy and otherwise invisible processes understandable. Ask students to identify whether a graphic shows appearance, movement, comparison, or an explanatory model.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Turn a selected explanation into a teacher-created prediction challenge: cover the next panel and ask students what will happen and why. Clarify that this is a classroom adaptation, not a claim that the book includes a game.
37. Placement	Trace the reading order of a selected page, including balloons, captions, and pictures. Students should place each explanation close to the feature or action it explains.
38. Form	Discuss what the informational-comics form allows Koch to do that a plain paragraph cannot. Students can compare a prose explanation of echolocation with a short comic explaining the same process.
39. Dummy	Create a rough paper mock-up before making a finished comic. Students use quick sketches to test whether the bat’s movement, explanations, and panel transitions are understandable.
40. Passion	Ask which choices suggest care for bats and enthusiasm for explaining their lives. Students choose one accurate fact they want others to appreciate and make it the focus of their final panel.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: “Slow Down the Echo.” Minutes 0–3: Revisit the book’s explanation of echolocation and identify the outgoing call, the object it encounters, and the returning echo. Explain that little brown bats use echoes to gather information, that bats are not blind, and that drawn sound marks are visual models. Minutes 3–5: Students plan a four-panel comic featuring a little brown bat hunting an insect. Minutes 5–12: They draw three panels that slow down one call-and-echo event, then a fourth that compresses the bat’s continued flight into a brief summary. Add one accurate explanatory caption and, optionally, an imagined line of bat dialogue. Minutes 12–16: Partners read the comic, identify the slowed moment, and check whether the call and echo are distinguishable. Minutes 16–19: Students revise one caption, visual cue, or panel transition. Minute 19–20: Share an exit statement: “I slowed down ___ so my reader could understand ___.” K–1 students may draw and dictate; grades 2–5 can label the sequence and explain their pacing choice in writing.

Classroom Activities

A Bat’s Night in Six Panels

Students create a six-panel science comic starring a little brown bat leaving its roost, using echolocation, and catching an insect. Inspired by Koch’s blend of character-driven storytelling and scientific explanation, students stretch one important instant across several panels and then summarize a longer stretch of flight in one panel. Partners read the comics and identify where the storytelling speeds up or slows down. Students draw imagined bat dialogue while keeping the science accurate.

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