These anecdotes are supported by research showing that students who are taught to develop mental imagery of text do better than control groups on tests of comprehension and recall. The research basis for the usefulness of transforming text into mental images can be found in Allan Paivio's dual coding theory , which holds that cognition consists of both a verbal system for language and a nonverbal, visual-spatial one for images.
By creating mental images from the words on a page or screen, we tap into both the verbal and visual-spatial representational systems, making abstract concepts more concrete and thus more meaningful and memorable. Visualizing while reading is a strategy that should be explicitly taught. The assumption that children are naturally imaginative may not be true for all students, and even those with vivid imaginations may need guidance in applying the active process of making brain movies to improve their understanding of what they read.
Follow these steps to introduce brain movies to your students:. Teachers who've used this strategy in their classrooms share these examples and tips for enhancing its effectiveness:. Florida teacher Kelly Rose introduced brain movies to a literature circle of fifth graders, beginning with the powerful language of poetry.
After guiding students to picture the images in their minds as they read and reread the poems, Ms. Rose then asked them to share what they visualized.
Readers who can imagine the characters they read about, for instance, may become more involved with what they are reading. This makes for a more meaningful reading experience and promotes continued reading.
Visualizing is a skill that can be helpful in many domains, and while it is often associated with teaching early readers, even experienced readers can benefit from practice with this skill. When selecting a text for a visualizing activity, start with a piece that contains descriptive language and strong verbs and that lends itself to conjuring vivid images.
It is not necessary to start with an entire book—even a well-crafted sentence or short paragraph can provide a rich springboard for a visualizing lesson. To begin a series of lessons that will focus on improving visualizing skills, you might choose to start with a short passage taken from a text or of your own creation. For instance, the following sentences could be used to spark discussions:. Joan could barely believe her eyes. All these gifts were for her!
She had never seen so many packages, not even on all her birthdays combined! After listening to or reading the sentences once or twice, students can discuss the mental images created by the sentences. There are so many fun books to use when teaching visualizing! Look for books that have descriptive language and are relatable to the students. That way they will be able to create a mental image in their mind.
Here are a few of my favorites to use for teaching visualization for kinder through second grade:. Make sure you stop to model visualizing for them several times in your read aloud, and then let them have a try.
Make sure to explicitly teach the sentence stems you want them to use to give them an example of the language you want them to use to talk about visualizing. Teaching students to visualize is fun because it can be hands-on. At different points of our read-aloud, I would have them stop and sketch what was in their mind on their sticky note.
We then would share our mental images with our neighbors. We did this activity with the book Fireflies by Julie Brinckloe. Another way to teach the visualization reading strategy is to have students bring their whiteboards and dry erase markers to the carpet for read aloud time. They could stop and draw on their whiteboard their mental images and share them with a partner.
Interested in lessons already made that teach visualization to your students? Looking for more ideas and ways to teach this skill? I can help you! We have a growing bundle of interactive read aloud lesson plans that focuses on visualization, making connections, and other reading comprehension skills! It has:. Come check it out HERE! Helping teachers like you navigate their way through their literacy block brings me great joy. I am a lifelong learner who loves staying on top of current literacy learning and practices.
Join the Balanced Literacy Facebook group! Your email address will not be published. No products in the cart. Professional Development. Shop Resources. February 13, How to Introduce the Visualization Reading Strategy. Share on facebook. As we teach students to make mental pictures and visualize as they read, we must provide students with opportunities to practice pulling their own b ackground knowledge and gathering important language from the text to help create their own creative mental image of the books that they are reading to understand the text at a deeper level.
So how can we get students to make meaningful mental images as they read to help them better understand the books that they are reading? Add these visualizing activities to your reading lesson plans to help you teach this reading strategy successfully and have your students hooked on visualizing as they read in no time at all! Three important discussion questions to ask during the illustration share time are, How are your illustrations the same and different than the ones in the book? What words from the text helped you to create that illustration?
How do your illustrations help you to better understand the story? While there are so many amazing picture books to use for this activity my three favorites are:. Try this: Want to mix up this activity? Instead of reading aloud a picture book and stopping to have students create their illustrations, have the students listen to a book from Storyline Online. Don't let them see it until after they have all 8 illustrations done. Then watch the story together, stopping and discussing how their illustrations match the movie.
Since visualization is a reading strategy that many students easily latch on to, it is sometimes easy to glaze over teaching this strategy. The more time you spend breaking down the how, why, what and when to visualize techniques , the deeper your students will dig into the text's meaning. By explaining this step by step approach, students will begin to pay close attention to the author's words and use them to create their mental images. When it comes to visualizing I make sure that students visualize story elements.
By stopping and visualizing characters, settings, events, and objects young readers can get into the text and begin to predict what will happen next, how a character is feeling, and begin to make inferences along the way. We practice visualizing characters, settings, events, and objects during our chapter book read aloud. I especially love this book because the world that the author creates is like nothing the students have ever experienced, forcing them to visualize and imagine the world in their own minds.
Additionally, the author does an amazing job of describing the characters' actions, feelings and emotions, making it easy for students to stop and visualize and then use their images to help them better understand and make inferences about the characters.
And super fun teacher bonus, this book is also available as a movie. Watch it, or even just bits and pieces of it, and have students compare and contrast their mental images with what they see in the movie.
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