That is, it was until I started teaching dialogue using comics!
I give the kids a template with the boxes, and I model the kind of drawing I expect (no coloring in yet, stick figures, just faces are okay). I also require that every panel must have at least one character talking.Once the comic is complete and the kids have had some time to share them with each other and enjoy them, that's when they're ready to learn the mechanics.
And it's really very simple. Instead of the bubble drawn around the character's words, the start and end of their speech just goes instead quotation marks. There's no "He said" in a comic, and there's no "My mom told me" in a comic. Kids seem to understand speech bubbles a lot more naturally than quotation marks, so the transfer process is easy once they have the visual. 
This is one of the lessons I have included in my personal narratives unit, but if you'd like to try a FREE revising dialogue homework page, it's a great little preview to what I'll be discussing next week. I will be teaching about shades of meaning as well as choosing more precise language for the word "said." 
