Of the many reading strategies teachers practice with their students, visualization is often easiest to explain and toughest to really use effectively.
Introduction/Objective
In this lesson, students are invited to draw what they picture as they’re reading, but extending that activity in a meaningful way can prove challenging. As with all reading strategies, the question for readers should not simply be, “What did I think about while I was reading?” but instead, “How does this help and change my understanding?” This lesson helps students bridge that gap.
Procedure
- Choose a short fictional text with vivid imagery (examples are suggested below). Pre-select 8-10 stopping points suitable for visualization.
- Read the text aloud, and at each stopping point, have students sketch what they’re picturing in their minds for a pre-determined interval (30 seconds works well). Collect their work at the end of the section.
- Browse students’ drawings for telling visualizations. For example, if a character is named Sam, some students may draw him as a boy and others as a girl. Select several drawings from each stopping point, and display them (perhaps on posterboards, or in a photocopied handout) for the students to view.
- Develop some questions that get at the meaning of the drawings. In the previous example, questions might relate to background knowledge or inferences that informed students’ perceptions of Sam’s gender.
- At a later class meeting, have students look at the selected drawings and answer the questions. This can take the form of a “gallery browse” where the posters are hung on the walls, or it can be done individually by students at their seats.
- Finally, discuss the students’ perceptions of the differences in their drawings. The main purpose of this discussion is to highlight that inferences and background knowledge shape our reading, that each reader has a different experience, and that visualization enhances the reading experience.
Assessment
- Assess students’ answers for completeness and/or their discussion participation using a pre-determined rubric.
- Offer another opportunity to explain a visualization from a different piece of text.
- Have students reflect in a conference or in writing on why visualization is important to the reading process.
Possible Extensions
- Students choose one of their sketches as a basis for a more formal piece of artwork, accompanied by an explanation of the scene's importance to the text.
- Students work in groups to select a poem and lead their peers through this activity to reinforce it. This would help students work on visualization from another standpoint, as they'd have to read carefully enough to decide where the easy-to-visualize stopping points would be.
Suggested Texts
"Leroy Rochbane"--published in Instead of Three Wishes: Magical Short Stories by Megan Whalen Turner [Puffin Shirt Stories, 1995].
"Oranges"--published in A Fire in My Hands by Gary Soto. [Harcourt Children's Books, 2006].
For Further Reading
Harvey, Stephanie, and Anne Goudvis. Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Understanding. Markham: Stenhouse, 2000.
Jessica Brown - Jessica is a seventh-grade teacher from Illinois with seven years' experience in a middle school language arts classroom. She has worked ...
