Superheroes Topic Guide

Superheroes like Superman, Batman, Captain America were first featured in children’s comics at the end of the 1930s. They seem very modern but they have lots of similarities to mythical heroes, for example, the Greek hero Heracles was extremely strong.

A superhero has superpowers that give them an advantage over other humans. Whether they can control the weather, like Storm in X-Men, or make people tell the truth, like Wonder Woman, they have to choose how they will use these powers to help people. More Topics about Marvel Avengers Gift.

Reception Superheroes

Who are the superheroes in your life? Why are they superheroes? Are you a superhero and why? This is a topic that focuses on the hero in all of us; a fun topic that focuses on ourselves, our families, superhero animals, superhero vehicles, the super people around us who help us, such as teachers, doctors, religious leaders, police, and firefighters.

I’m a superhero

Can you bring out the superhero in you? Explore is the best you can be, why you are unique and how you can help your body be strong and healthy, your brain – sparky and your actions – helpful.

My super family

Who are the key members of your family, and what makes them your superheroes? Draw portraits, interview them, and celebrate their special qualities. Hold an art exhibition and invite your special people.

Real Superhero

Superheroes are all around us! There are teachers, police, paramedics, doctors, and religious leaders. Invite some of them to tell you about their jobs, say thank you, and make speeches about why they are superheroes.

Superhero Vehicles

Take an opportunity to focus on superhero vehicles that build, move earth and transport us across different terrains. Look at their features and make your own small-world versions. Do some great related maths.

Superhero Animals

Animals can be superheroes too! Discover the ways dogs are trained to help people with additional needs and find out about horses that work for us. Make superhero animals from junk modeling for your own show!

Superhero Project

What would your ideal playground look like? Work together as a class to improve your playground; organize fundraising opportunities in school and celebrate your achievements.

5 Fun Superhero Ideas for Teachers

Introducing Superhero ideas into the classroom is a great way to encourage creativity and bring any number of important topics to life. Below, we’ve brought together some of the best Superhero ideas for teachers to use in the classroom, from individual experiments and projects to an extended theme running over a period of weeks.

What’s the Best Material for a Superhero Cape?

This idea from Science Sparks uses the Superhero topic to introduce an investigation into the properties of different materials. An exciting outdoor learning opportunity, this is a great way to encourage children to consider, plan, and measure the results of an experiment, in a systematic and scientific way. In measuring the effectiveness of each material, the class can develop a basic understanding of the requirements of a consistent, fair test and arrive at conclusions as to the properties of the perfect superhero cape!

Free the Superheroes Topic

Superheroes don’t have to be confined to individual lessons, as this extended idea from Rock My Classroom demonstrates. A series of tasks, around the theme of ‘The Joker’ kidnapping our favorite Super Heroes, are set for children to complete over a few weeks in the hope of freeing releasing the captives. This is a really flexible theme, around which you can mold any number of activities with no end to the fun you and your class can have. Some of the examples used include unlocking padlocks with maths, using literacy to shoot baddies, and designing and building traps to catch The Joker.

Superhero Maths Game: Catch a Villain

Be a Superhero and capture some evil villains in this great activity from Inspiration Laboratories. This simple maths game is perfect for practicing basic addition, and can easily be tweaked to aid the learning of other mathematical processes such as multiplication. Easy to set up and play, you can tailor the game to target specific areas to work on, as well as altering its difficulty to suit your audience.

Phonics – Decoding for Superheroes

Here is another great way of spicing up literacy, by encouraging your class to use their skills to decode hidden messages and save the world! Reception & Early KS1 children are needed to practice their phonics in an effort to rescue the town’s kidnapped mayor, uncovering messages from the kidnapper and revealing his location. There are also a number of additional literacy tasks, such as writing a letter demanding the Mayor’s release, which allows you to challenge and stretch different ability groups in the class.

Superhero School – Learning Activities

This idea from No Time for Flash Cards demonstrates just how flexible this topic is. Younger children can use these simple activities to work on fine motor skills, counting, and writing all in the role of an important Superhero. With a simple idea for rewarding your children once completed, this simple set of games is easy to set up, and sure to generate a positive reaction from all involved!

Other Teaching Ideas

• Use Michael Rosen’s fabulous book Send for a Superhero as the starting point for learning in your classroom with these teaching ideas and activities.
• Read this exciting adventure about Supertato with your children and try some of our suggested teaching ideas and classroom activities!
• Create a superhero super powers display board similar to this one.
• Try this superhero lesson from Minecraft Education.
• Plan an interview with a superhero. What kind of questions would you ask them? How would you find out about their life? In pairs, act out the interview.
• Investigate the science behind superheroes with these presentations and resources.

Resources

• What happens in this superhero’s adventure? Try this free writing prompt!
• Reward your children with this free ‘You’re a Superhero’ certificate!
• Here are two superhero-themed sheets for your children to use during their Maths activities.
• Can your children create character profiles for these superhero characters?
• Can your children design a new gadget for a superhero? Ask them to draw or write about their design on this template.
• This page has lots of ideas for superhero-themed science experiments.

Superhero Facts

Superman first appeared in a comic in 1938. The comic, Action Comics #1, is very rare, and in 2014 a copy was sold on eBay for $3.2 million!
There are two types of superheroes; those that have superhuman powers (like Spiderman) and those who have special training and technology (like Iron Man).
The first female superheroes, Fantomah and the Woman in Red, both first appeared in comics in 1940.

Superhero Videos

SPIDER-MAN 3 (2007)

Critics Consensus: Though there are more characters and plotlines, and the action sequences still dazzle, Spider-Man 3 nonetheless isn’t quite as refined as the first two.
Synopsis: Your friendly neighborhood web-slinger is back, only this time his sunny outlook has become partially overcast in the third chapter… [More]
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church
Directed By: Sam Raimi

AQUAMAN (2018)

Critics Consensus: Aquaman swims with its entertainingly ludicrous tide, offering up CGI superhero spectacle that delivers energetic action with an emphasis on good old-fashioned fun.
Synopsis: From Warner Bros. Pictures and director James Wan comes an action-packed adventure that spans the vast, visually breathtaking underwater world… [More]
Starring: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Willem Dafoe
Directed By: James Wan

THOR: THE DARK WORLD (2013)

Critics Consensus: It may not be the finest film to come from the Marvel Universe, but Thor: The Dark World still offers plenty of the humor and high-stakes action that fans have come to expect.
Synopsis: Marvel’s “Thor: The Dark World” continues the big-screen adventures of Thor, the Mighty Avenger, as he battles to save Earth…
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård
Directed By: Alan Taylor

THE INCREDIBLE HULK (2008)

Critics Consensus: The Incredible Hulk may not be quite the smashing success that fans of Marvel’s raging behemoth might hope for, but it offers more than enough big green action to make up for its occasionally puny narrative.
Synopsis: Mild-mannered scientist Bruce Banner has been traveling the globe in search of the antidote that will allow him to break…
Starring: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt
Directed By: Louis Leterrier

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (2018)

Critics Consensus: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse matches bold storytelling with striking animation for a purely enjoyable adventure with heart, humor, and plenty of superhero action.
Synopsis: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the creative minds behind The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street, bring their unique talents…
Starring: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson (XVI), Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali
Directed By: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman

BLACK PANTHER (2018)

Critics Consensus: Black Panther elevates superhero cinema to thrilling new heights while telling one of the MCU’s most absorbing stories — and introducing some of its most fully realized characters.
Synopsis: “Black Panther” follows T’Challa who, after the events of “Captain America: Civil War,” returns home to the isolated, technologically advanced…
Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira
Directed By: Ryan Coogler

Superhero Books

• Best Superhero Graphic Novels
• Marvel Now!
• Best SuperQueeroes/SuperVillains Books
• Get Your Super On: Heroine Style
• Kick-Ass Female Superheroes
• Marvel Comics 2014 Collected Editions Worth Reading
• Marvel Universe Events
• Marvel Comics 2015 Collected Editions Worth Reading
• Marvel Comics 2017 Collected Editions

Super hero ideas to engage your students

As teachers, we sometimes struggle to find the right materials and activities to engage young learners and teenagers. If you can tap into the imagination of your students, however, you can captivate their attention and take advantage of numerous learning opportunities.

We covered Pearson’s new series of Marvel superhero-centered readers in a recent post, How to motivate reluctant readers, and showed how they can be inspiring teaching resources.

Now we’re going to take a look at how else you can use the exciting world of superheroes in the classroom as a follow-up to these reading activities.

The super hero hot seat

This is a fun group activity and works well as a follow-up to a quiet reading session. The objective is to practice question formation, listening comprehension and speaking.

Preparation is light, you will only need to write the names of various superheroes, supervillains, and famous characters on separate slips of paper. You will need at least one name for each student in a group. Once you have them all put them in separate envelopes prior to the class.

If you are using any of the Pearson Readers Marvel Series, such as The Avengers, you can take the characters straight from the Who’s Who pages found in the books

First, take five minutes to review some language related to superheroes with a quick whole-class mind-mapping activity.

Write Superpowers on the board and have each student call out their superhero’s physical descriptions and clothing, favorite abilities (e.g. ability to fly, invisibility, super strength, x-ray vision, etc.). Note down any other relevant vocabulary.

Next, take three minutes to review closed question formation with the students using some of the vocabularies you have written on the board. More complex questions can be used for higher-level classes:

• Can you fly?
• Are you strong?
• Do you wear a cape?
• Have you got any enemies?

A super hero news story

superhero english activities

This writing activity works well as a follow-up to the superhero hot seat. The objective is to practice writing and reinforce vocabulary relating to abilities, physical descriptions, and daily routines.

Tell students that they are going to write a newspaper interview using their notes from the interview activity. They must choose one of the characters they interviewed (they should not use their own character).

Tell them to use this structure and answer the following questions:

• Headline
• Who is the super hero and where is he or she from?
• What is his or her super power(s)?
• Where does he or she live?
• Other information from the interview
• Allow students 15 to 20 minutes to write their news story. If time allows, let students read their reports aloud in class. Note down good use of language and correct any errors in class at the end of the activity.

Saving the world with a super hero comic strip

In this activity for young learners, students create a comic strip in order to practice writing simple sentences and to reinforce vocabulary.

First, draw a simple globe on the board and tell students that superheroes sometimes work together to save the world.

Ask students what superheroes might need to save the world from and elicit answers for two or three minutes. If they struggle to think of examples, draw the following on the board to prompt them:

• Aliens
• A meteor
• Super villains

Next put students in pairs or groups of three. Tell them to choose a superhero identity for themselves (for example, Capital America, Thor, etc.) and explain that they are superhero friends and it is their job to save the world from one of the problems on the board.

Distribute plain paper to each person. Ask them to draw a grid with six to eight boxes to start their cartoon strip.

Students should create a short original story, featuring their characters working together to save the world. Allow 25 minutes for this.