Visualizing Text - Lessons By The Lake

Visualizing is one of my favorite reading strategies to teach because mental images are SO POWERFUL! When I look at a menu, you bet I am visualizing what each of those meals would look like as I read the descriptions. As I plan the perfect present to give my baby, I visualize his excited face and how he will play with it.

Now, why is visualizing so important for our students to do while reading? One of the many reasons is that it helps them to check their understanding. If you are visualizing a family on a farm and all of the sudden someone is about to fall into a volcano, you may have misunderstood the setting! Books are so rich with descriptive vocabulary that is just begging to be visualized. When you read about characters baking an apple pie, you shouldn’t just think about how the pie would look, you should visualize how it smells and tastes! Dive right into that book with the characters and experience it with them!

We model and practice visualizing during shared reading time. I use Comprehension Crew characters to model reading strategies for my students. We read interactively as they practice implementing the strategies themselves. I teach my reading strategies in a concrete way to engage students in the experience and meaning of it. Victor the Visualizer is an artist who visits to help us learn to visualize!

Victor The Visualizer

Victor is an expert in noticing the details in a text that bring it to life. He teaches students to experience the text with their five senses and paint a mental picture. He also helps students to “read” the pictures to pick up on information that the illustrator is giving that may not be written in words. Victor has a specific sentence frame that he uses to make sure that is focusing on consistently visualizing while reading. He provides students with the confidence to use this reading strategy to help them monitor their understanding of the text and enjoy it even more!

What is the Comprehension Crew?

Comprehension Crew is a group of characters each representing an essential reading skill. Each character has a profession, song, gesture, and prop that provide a concrete representation of the reading skill. These characters are used to model and reinforce each skill both in life and in text. The character helps students to understand, remember, and intentionally apply skills as they are reading.

Visualizing Introduction Activity

My favorite activity to introduce the strategy of visualizing is to read Cloudy With Chance of Meatballs! Students close their books on at specific points the story also they just listen as I read. Then I give them time to draw what they imagined on a white board. I read the page a few times so that they are able to hear all of the amazing little details. I put post it notes on the pages that we will be drawing in the students’ books so then they can just open up right to the page and compare. We discuss what similarities and differences there are in their drawings and the illustration. I ask students to explain their drawings and what specific words influenced what they drew. Students are also fast to notice the details in the illustration that wasn’t explained in the words. We talk about why the illustrator would do that! This is a very fun hands on activity that engages them in the concrete idea of visualizing.

Practicing Mental Visualization

In my Victor The Visualizer resource pack, there are many ways for students to practice visualizing on a small scale to gain practice and confidence in using the reading strategy. There are differentiated passages with scaffolded graphic organizers to help students find the descriptive and sensory words they should use to paint their mental picture.

Another fun way for students to practice is with picture task cards! Students can take turns describing and drawing what they see to discover the importance of those detail words. This helps to support writing also! In my resource pack, there are carefully chosen picture task cards to use for this activity!