Swing

by Audrey Meeker, Sarah Davidson

In this middle-grade graphic novel written by Audrey Meeker and illustrated by Sarah Davidson, a school swing-dance assignment becomes a way to explore identity, friendship, and expectations about gender. As students navigate partnering and performance, the story considers how assumptions about who should lead—and how people should behave—can limit their relationships and self-expression.

Big Idea

Learning to move with another person requires listening, trust, and flexibility. Swing invites students to question restrictive expectations while showing how words, pictures, and page design work together to communicate change.

Discussion Questions

1.How does the dance assignment bring unspoken expectations about gender and behavior into view? Choose a scene that supports your interpretation.
2.When does leading look different from controlling? How does the story help you distinguish between them?
3.Find a moment when a character's expression or posture communicates something their words do not. What do readers learn from that difference?
4.How do embarrassment, uncertainty, or fear of judgment affect the characters' choices? What helps someone take a social risk?
5.Where does the book ask readers to reconsider an early impression of someone? How do the words and illustrations work together to change that impression?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 50–55 minutes📦 Copies of Swing or a legally displayed teacher-selected excerpt, paper, pencils, erasers, rulers, and optional colored pencils; six-panel templates are helpful.

Learning Goals

Use evidence from dialogue, illustrations, and panel sequences to explain a character's response to a challenging interaction.
Explain how graphic-novel techniques accelerate action or slow readers' attention.
Create two versions of a scene using deliberate choices about pacing and visual detail.
Distinguish supportive leadership and collaboration from restrictive assumptions about roles.

Activity Steps

1.Introduce the question, 'How can a comic make a few seconds feel important?' Read a short, teacher-selected dance-assignment sequence from Swing, first for meaning and then for craft.
2.In pairs, identify evidence of pace: repeated actions, changes in panel size, dialogue length, facial expressions, and silent panels. Discuss how these choices affect the characters' interaction.
3.Give students a fictional scenario connected to the book: two students preparing to dance disagree about who should lead, then pause to listen. Students plan an exchange that questions assumptions without copying the book's dialogue.
4.Create a fast six-panel version that emphasizes action and brief speech. Create a second six-panel version that stretches one significant instant through reactions, close-ups, or silence.
5.Exchange comics with a partner. Partners identify where they read fastest and slowest, then explain which visual or verbal choices caused that response.
6.Revise one panel and write an exit reflection explaining how the revision changes both pacing and the portrayal of cooperation.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS.RL.5.7 — Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to a text's meaning, tone, or beauty.
ELA: CCSS.RL.6.3 — Describe how a plot unfolds through episodes and how characters respond or change.
ELA: CCSS.W.6.3 — Write narratives using effective techniques, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.
ELA: CCSS.SL.6.1 — Engage effectively in collaborative discussions, building on others' ideas and expressing ideas clearly.
SEL: Relationship skills and social awareness — Practice listening, perspective-taking, and questioning assumptions about others.

Printable Teacher’s Guide

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Grades 4-8 Ready to print

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

Swing offers a useful setting for studying narrative pace because dance makes timing visible. A movement can happen quickly, but a character's decision to attempt it, resist it, or trust a partner may deserve much more reading time. In Audrey Meeker and Sarah Davidson's graphic novel, students can investigate how the school dance storyline connects physical coordination with the more complicated work of navigating expectations and relationships. Teach students to read the page twice: once to understand what happens and again to notice how the creators direct attention. Compare the amount of story time represented with the space given to it. A brief exchange may invite close attention to expressions and posture, while a longer stretch of activity may pass through a compact sequence. Students should support these observations with the pages in front of them rather than assume every dance scene moves quickly. The workshop turns these observations into writing decisions. Students will experiment with when to move, when to pause, and what to leave unsaid, treating illustration and layout as storytelling tools rather than decoration. The guidance below uses passage-finding prompts rather than page-specific claims; teachers should select and verify examples in their classroom edition, especially for techniques that may not appear explicitly.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
Pacing	Compare a dance-action sequence with an uncomfortable conversation about the assignment. Ask students which feels faster and identify the panel, dialogue, and reaction choices responsible.
Plot	Trace how the school dance assignment creates decisions and consequences rather than functioning only as background. Build a cause-and-effect chain using events students can verify in the text.
Prosody	Read a short exchange aloud twice, changing emphasis and pauses while keeping the wording intact. Discuss how lettering, punctuation, and expressions suggest a delivery without dictating a single correct performance.
Word	Examine words associated with dancing, especially 'lead' and 'follow,' wherever they occur in the selected passage. Discuss how their physical meanings can differ from the social meanings characters attach to them.
Concept	Explore the central storytelling concept of using a dance partnership to examine relationships and expectations. Ask what the physical task makes visible that an ordinary conversation might not.
Voice & Worldview	Choose an exchange that reveals a character's assumptions about appropriate behavior. Separate that character's viewpoint from the larger perspective suggested by consequences, other characters, and illustrations.
Point of View	Track whose reactions receive attention during a dance-related interaction. Discuss how visual emphasis aligns readers with a character even when there is no first-person narration.
Setting & Place	Study how the school environment affects the stakes of participating in dance. Ask how being watched by peers changes an interaction that might feel different in private.
Original Characters	List specific choices, gestures, and contradictions that make a central student more than a familiar 'reluctant participant' type. Require evidence rather than assigning personality labels from appearance.
Dialogue	Compare what dance partners say with what their bodies communicate. Ask students to identify where a short reply speeds the exchange or leaves a feeling unresolved.
Details	Look for a small visual detail in a dance sequence, such as hand position, distance between partners, or gaze. Explain how it helps readers understand comfort, uncertainty, or cooperation.
Descriptions	Translate one panel into prose that describes both movement and emotion. Compare how long that description takes to read with how the original image delivers its information.
Firsts	Locate the first presentation of the dance assignment or a character's first response to it. Discuss how that introduction establishes expectations that later scenes reinforce or challenge.
Immediacy & Engagement	Choose a moment when readers can sense an awkward interaction unfolding before anyone explains it. Identify how gesture, framing, and dialogue bring the reader into the immediate situation.
Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Distinguish a fully dramatized dance interaction from any compressed transition or sequence covering more time. Ask why one event receives moment-by-moment attention while another does not.
Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Track a question such as whether partners will cooperate or how someone will respond to a challenge. Notice how social uncertainty can sustain suspense without physical danger.
Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check whether the selected section actually uses a time shift or an unresolved ending; do not label an ordinary transition a flashback. If none appears, sketch how inserting one would change the dance scene's pace and clarity.
Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Examine a page or chapter ending near a consequential interaction. Identify the expectation it creates and whether the following opening answers, delays, or redirects it.
Pace & Creativity	Redesign one dance-related moment as either a single panel or four smaller panels. Compare the emotional possibilities each version creates without changing the basic event.
Play	Use paper figures or stick drawings to explore how a change in position alters the meaning of a dance partnership. Keep the experiment focused on visual storytelling, with no required physical contact.
Performance	Discuss the difference between performing dance steps and performing an identity for peers. Use a verified scene to consider how an audience influences a character's behavior.
Personality	Compare how two characters respond to the same dance-related demand. Examine how the timing of an answer, gesture, or refusal communicates personality.
Humor	Locate a moment students interpret as funny and identify its setup, reaction, or visual incongruity. Discuss whether the humor challenges an expectation or risks making someone's discomfort the joke.
Pause	Find a reaction beat or relatively quiet panel in a conversation. Ask what readers have time to notice there and what would disappear if the panel were removed.
Poetry / Poetic Devices	Investigate whether a repeated movement or visual pattern creates an effect similar to a poetic refrain. Treat dance as a possible metaphor for cooperation only when students can support that reading with the story.
Repetition	Look for repeated gestures, expressions, words, or situations across the dance storyline. Compare the repetitions to see whether they show practice, resistance, or a changing relationship.
Rhythm	Tap a gentle beat while following a short panel sequence, then notice where reading resists that beat. Discuss how visual rhythm can echo dancing without matching musical time exactly.
Punctuation	Examine punctuation in an emotionally charged exchange and compare it with the accompanying expressions. Rewrite one balloon's punctuation to test how perceived speed or tone changes.
Questions	Separate questions spoken by characters from questions the scene creates for readers. Track which questions about the assignment, partnership, or social expectations receive quick answers and which remain open.
Compare-Contrast	Compare an earlier and later interaction involving the dance assignment. Use similarities in action or setting to make differences in trust, confidence, or assumptions easier to see.
Objects	Choose an object actually visible in a school or dance scene and consider its narrative function. Does it establish place, direct attention, enable an action, or reveal a character's relationship to the activity?
Threes	Search for a genuine three-part pattern, such as action, reaction, and response, rather than assuming the book uses a rule of three. If no clear example appears, create a three-panel adaptation of a dance interaction.
Lists	Turn a selected interaction into a list of movements and another list of emotional changes. Compare what each list captures and what only the original sequence communicates.
White Space & Negative Space	Study panel gutters and open areas around figures in a selected dance scene. Discuss whether spacing affects isolation, closeness, or reading speed, distinguishing visible evidence from interpretation.
Art & Graphics	Examine how Sarah Davidson's illustration communicates weight, movement, posture, and interpersonal distance. Ask what the artwork contributes that Meeker's dialogue alone would not convey.
Interactives & Gamification	Create a classroom 'pacing detective' challenge in which students find evidence of acceleration, hesitation, and changing cooperation. This is an instructional extension, not a claim that the book includes interactive features.
Placement	Trace how the positions of figures, balloons, and panels guide the eye through a dance interaction. Ask which information readers encounter first and how that order shapes their interpretation.
Form	Discuss why a graphic novel is well suited to a story involving bodies, movement, and social expectations. Compare one original sequence with a prose adaptation to identify what each form makes easier to communicate.
Dummy	Make a rough folded-paper dummy, or miniature book mock-up, for a short dance-partner scene. Test where a page turn should fall to emphasize hesitation, a response, or a shift toward cooperation.
Passion	Ask what characters appear to care about beyond completing the assignment, supporting answers with actions and dialogue. Invite students to give their own comic character a similarly meaningful concern rather than relying only on plot mechanics.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: 'The Beat Before Trust.' Minutes 0–4: Read a teacher-selected sequence from Swing involving the dance assignment or a partner interaction. Identify one moment when an expectation about leading, following, or participation affects the exchange, and name one observable pacing technique. Minutes 4–6: Plan an original four-panel scene in which two fictional students preparing to dance encounter a similar assumption; do not reproduce the book's dialogue. Minutes 6–13: Draw and letter the scene, slowing the instant before one student listens or reconsiders by using a close-up, a silent beat, or a change in posture. Stick figures are welcome. Minutes 13–17: Add a two-panel fast version of the same event, then exchange with a partner who identifies what the slower version makes more noticeable. Minutes 17–20: Revise one panel and complete this reflection: 'Like the sequence we studied in Swing, I directed attention to ___ by ___. This helps readers understand ___.' No dancing, physical contact, or personal disclosure is required.

Classroom Activities

One Dance Moment, Two Speeds

Students study a short sequence from Swing's school dance storyline, then create two six-panel comics showing the same fictional dance-partner interaction at different speeds. One version moves quickly through the action; the other slows a moment of hesitation, listening, or trust. Students use panel size, dialogue, body language, and silent beats to show how pacing changes meaning. Physical dancing is not required.

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