 Visualize
Students will learn to visualize the details of a text. Students will use other sensory images to help them better understand what they read. Visualizing helps when learning vocabulary. Study visualizing to better understand inferring. Visualize to connect. Dramatize to write. Whereas we use and integrate all strategies while reading throughout the year, we spend the sixth month of school focusing our study of the proficient reader strategies on using our sensory images.
When readers create mental images, they engage in text in ways that make it personal and memorable to them alone. Anchored in prior knowledge, images come from emotions and all five senses, enhancing understanding and immersing the reader in rich detail.
Keene and Zimmermann, Mosaic of Thought
Getting Started: Call On All Senses to Understand
Engaged readers see pictures in their heads. By teaching children to recognize the pictures they have in their heads, the teacher stresses comprehension along with decoding. Sometimes children forget that reading is about making meaning --- not just reading words and plowing ahead even when the text isn't making sense --- but really trying to figure out what's happening in the story in other ways.
The pictures children see in their heads are ALWAYS things they've seen before (text to self, text to text or text to world connections). A child cannot imagine a chair if she's not seen one.
One way to get children to really see the connections they are making to a text is to have them draw while they are listening to a read aloud. They can't be wrong. They can draw one picture. They can draw over several pages. They can draw in color. They can sequence their pictures. The key is to capture the events or ideas...not make beautiful and accurate illustrations.
The first time I introduce visualization I give very little direction because I want to see what the children do --- how much they understand of the task, whether each child even sees pictures as I read, and how they tackle the task (from the child who gets frustrated and won't risk the work... to the child who draws information NOT in the book... to the child who segments her paper, draws in sequence, and can do a complete retelling). I observe. I assess. I make plans for how I will debrief with the children and where I will go next.
These ideas are just the tip of what I teach. Symbolization, illustration, rhyming and rapping, reader's theater, and the author's crafts of using exaggeration and description fit easily into our study this month. And why?
Some adults report that they don't use their visualization strength to understand story or expository texts. They weren't taught how or that it was important; they weren't asked if they were seeing pictures. So, if you ever felt that teaching this strategy is fluff, imagine reading a book and not seeing any pictures in your mind. It can happen if students are not taught how. Check with your students and go from there.
Two books that help a lot are Debbie Miller's Reading With Meaning and Susan Zimmermann's 7 Keys to Comprehension,. They are both easy to read and have lesson plans to try. A great idea book for guiding children to talk to one another is Knee to Knee, Eye to Eye by Ardith Davis Cole.
Sample Lesson: You Can't Be Wrong
Objective: Say something like, I'm going to read a book to you called The Bear's Toothache by David McPhail. I will not show you the pictures because I want you to visualize in your head and make some discoveries about visualizing. (The Bear's Toothache is one of my favorites to start teaching visualization but you can use any short, read-aloud.)
MINI LESSON (approximately 20-30 minutes)(This is my kindergarten lesson but it can be used with other grade levels with very little adaption.)
- Pre-Assessment:
- Turn to your partner and tell them everything you know about how you read. What do you think you do when you read?
- The teacher walks among the partners to see if someone mentions making pictures as a strategy for reading.
- Share whole group. If a child mentioned visualizing in any way, ask that child to share her response with the class.
- Tell the group the objective for the day. Say something like, "While I read aloud, you practice drawing the pictures in your heads on paper. The great thing is WE CAN'T BE WRONG! What one person sees might not be what the next person sees. The way we draw does not matter. Using colors today is not important because we're going to sketch as fast as we can QUICKLY. However, if you see color in your mind and you want to put that in the picture, there are crayons ready for you.
- Model. The teacher reads the first page aloud and draws what she envisions on chart paper. The biggest point to make is that what the teacher is drawing is based on evidence in the text. In other words, the teacher is not making up ideas. The other point is that the teacher, and soon the students, should make quick sketches as best they can of the details they see in their heads.
- Ask the students if they're ready to try. Direct them to open their daybooks and draw what they see as the teacher reads. Start reading back at the beginning of the book to scaffold instruction. (If students don't have daybooks, give them a couple sheets of unlined paper.)
- Teacher reads The Bear's Toothache with all the pictures covered up. The teacher observes the students as they draw. Try limited encouragement, not to take the focus off the task, but to make children feel less anxious and to encourage a variety of responses. For example, mention a risk a students takes. Point out when a student draws what he hears in the book. Praise the fact that everyone is drawing their own way.
- I see xxxx thinking.
- I see xxxx drawing a pillow and the author mentioned a pillow.
- I see xxxx has lots of pictures on her page. She is drawing the whole time.
- I see xxxx drawing on a new page. That's okay, too.
- If you feel the children are doing just fine, continue reading, pausing every so often so that students have time to sketch what they're thinking.
- Bring the children back to the rug. Show students drawings that illustrate different ways of approaching the task and reassure the children all are fine. Highlight the variety of approaches to finishing the assignment: using one page and drawing one picture the whole time, segmenting the paper and drawing several pictures, drawing in sequence, using several pages to get all the thinking down. Reinforce that the thinking might be messy and different and no matter what, they all did well.
- Ask the children to get knee-to-knee and eye-to-eye with one or two partners. Say something like, Explain what you saw in your head to a partner or to your small group. Talk to each other about what is the same or what is different. (Model how partners talk to one another if you haven't done that before. Ask two children to sit in front of the group and talk them through your steps so everyone has a visual of what they will be doing in just a few minutes.)
- Read the book to the whole group again and show the pictures this time. Ask questions like, what will happen next? What did she throw at the tooth? Did you think the bear would be hiding behind the door? Lead the children to an understanding that's how the illustrator saw it. Not wrong. Not right. Just her privilege. Also, point out that the reason the students remember the text so well is because they took time to visualize it.
- Closure --- Say something like, readers try to see what's happening in the story by listening to the words and making pictures in their heads. Try that again when your parents read to you, or when I read to you, or when you read. We will talk more about mental imaging.
- Teacher summary for older students:
- The author's details help you see a mental picture.
- The reader's background knowledge helps the reader visualize.
INDEPENDENT READING (approximately 35-40 minutes for introduction, reading and closure)
(Prepare a basket of books. Cover up the pictures with sticky notes.)
- Say something like, As you read in partners today, I want you to think about what you see in your head.
- Select books from this basket that have the pictures covered up.
- Mark the places in the text with sticky notes that made you see a mental picture.
- Talk to your partner about what you see.
- When you are finished reading, look at the pictures (but put the sticky notes back when you are finished so others can try your book as well.)
- You will have time to read several books.
- Bring one book to share with the whole group at closure time. Mark where you visualized and you can tell the class about it.
- IMPORTANT STEP! Before students begin reading time, bring two students to the front of the room to model following the directions that were just explained (so that children have a visual model of what they are to do). The teacher may need to repeat the directions one at a time so students are sure of what to do.
- Teacher circulates around the room and checks in with partners. Teacher may pull one or more groups during this time to read together, talking about how visualization works to help comprehension or on other skills, as needed.
SHARE TIME (approximately 20 - 30 minutes)
Let children share examples of the picture(s) they saw in their heads, either for the whole group or in a knee-to-knee, eye-to-eye format in small groups or partnerships. Ask them to describe their experience when they saw the illustrator's pictures.
ASSESSMENT: Ask, How does visualizing help you understand what you read AND how can you apply this strategy to your reading life? Ask students to tell a partner or record what they learned about visualization as a reading strategy in their daybooks.
OTHER MENTAL IMAGING ACTIVITIES
Building prior knowledge - with pictures and film clips.
Vocabulary - symbolizing ideas like theme, infer, equation
Poetry reading - visualizing the text.
Drama - acting out stories students are reading or writing.
Rap - creating rap from story.
Onomatopoeia - examining the author's technique.
Reading/ writing to music - to determine mood.
Drawing - from text to improve comprehension.
Illustrating - writing text to go with the picture.
Singing - putting story to music.
Reader's Theater - performing texts.
Cartoons - summarizing text in cartoon fashion.
Writing description - and then illustrating.
Writing the climax of the story - trying to get the movies of the mind on paper in sequenced detail.
Drawing Journals - you can even buy ones with blank paper.
Mind mapping --- taking notes or reviewing by writing words and drawing symbols and watching one's mind organize ideas.
Graphic Organizers - taking text and summarizing in a predetermined way.
Newscasts - great for characterization, interviewing characters in texts.
Puppets - for retelling or new interpretations.
Visual representations of text.
Interpreting photographs and other visuals.
MY FAVORITE BOOKS
Big, Big Sea by Jennifer Eachus
Bear's Toothache by David McPhail
Bedhead by Marge Palatini and Jack E. Davis
Night in the Country by Cynthia Rylant
The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer
The Napping House by Audrey Wood
Tuck Everlasting By Natalie Babbitt
Top Secret by John Reynolds Gardiner
Red Riding Hood (works well for acting out)
Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry G. Allard (Author), James Marshall (Illustrator)
Fireflies by Julie Brinkloe
Good Dog Carl by Alexandra Day - wordless picture book
I'm in Charge of Celebrations by Byrd Baylor
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