First grade teachers really focus on reading comprehension in the spring. It’s that magical time of the year when our students are reading (finally) and we can really tailor our teaching to understanding what we are reading. If you haven’t read my post on reading comprehension, head here to catch up.
Visualizing is an important reading comprehension strategy. Good readers create mental images or movies in their minds to represent the ideas that they read in the text. This greatly influences reading comprehension. It helps students understand what they are reading at a deeper level.
Visualizing is one of my favorite strategies to teach because it is highly engaging for students and it helps readers of all levels, including struggling readers, connect with the text.
When students visualize they:
- Make predictions
- Pay attention to vocabulary
- Understand key story elements
- Make connections
- Recall the text easily
- Self-monitor
- Actively read
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.
- Quick Pic
To help students create mental images, they can create a “quick pic” (or sketch). This is a great way to hold students accountable for independent reading. I don’t want students drawing the whole time instead of reading, so it’s important to teach them to make a quick pic. Their drawings should support the work that they are doing as readers.
Giving students specific visualizing tasks to complete before, during, and after they read, keeps them focused during independent reading time and helps keep a balance between reading and sketching.
2. Sketching as you read
Grab a picture book that has vivid vocabulary and imagery. I suggest:
A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon
Sunflower House by Eve Bunting
The Little Red Fort by Brenda Maier
The Storm Book by Charlotte Zolotow
The Purple Kangaroo by Michael Ian Black
The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson
Have students fold the paper in half so they have two boxes. Mark the boxes 1 and 2. Read half of the book without showing the illustrations. Stop. Have students draw what they visualize. When I do this, I have students lay down with their eyes closed and just listen to the story. Once they are done, finish the book and have them draw what they visualized again.
Once students get good at this, I have them fold the paper into fourths and have them draw their mental images 4 times.
After you complete the activity, read the book again showing the illustrations. Then, have students share their visualizations. Discuss how their illustrations are different than the book and why.
See if students can identify words that helped them create their mental images. Noticing the language of the book not only teaches students to be more aware of word choice but also helps with word choice when they are writing.
3. Comparing visualizations
Not only do we compare mental images with the illustrators, but we compare them with each other. We talk about why our mental images are similar and why they are different. Of course it comes down to background knowledge, or schema, but also the words we latch on to. Often times students will draw parts that they connect with or parts where the author used vivid vocabulary.
During buddy reading, I will have students work with a partner to visualize. The partners can compare mental images. I use my Visualizing Activities to do this. They are perfect to use because there are no pictures. Students can work together reading the passage, highlighting words that help them create mental images, draw their visualization and then compare their drawings.
Visualization engages all levels of readers and helps students dig deeper into comprehending texts. It is a strategy that helps with all the other reading comprehension strategies because it aids in comprehension.
Love these visualizing lesson ideas? Be sure to pin them to save them!
