Visualizing for Comprehension?
Posted on May 18, 2011 by Melissa Edwards in Uncategorized.
Tags: Reading Comprehension
Earlier this week, I came across Critical Components of Reading: Comprehension Activities. (I know that is sounds like a fancy, hard-to-read article. but really it is not.) At the top of that page, it talks about how using Visualizing can be a helpful comprehension activity:
Teach students to make a visual picture in their mind of what is occurring in the story. Have students stop at the end of each page, close their eyes, and visualize what has happened in the story so far. Encourage students to discuss what they are visualizing about the story so that any misconceptions can be corrected. Students may benefit from hearing someone else describe what they have been reading.
I am a visual learner and when I remember things I “see them” in my head (I form pictures in mind), so I can see how this strategy could help with comprehension.
I started searching the internet for other ideas about ways to use the Visualizing Strategy for Comprehension:
- Into the Book lists Visualizing as a teaching tip for reading and understanding fiction books
- ReadWriteThink provides an activity using Visualizing to strengthen comprehension skills.
- The Reading Lady provide a lesson plan called “Visualizing from a Vivid Piece of Text”
- The Inspired Classroom has a blog post about Visualization in Reading and Music stating that visualization is a huge key to comprehension.
- Reading.org calls Visualization the missing piece between reading and writing
What are some ways children can use the visualizing skill along with the reading and writing that happens on BigUniverse?
image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/68676385@N00/290412819/
What a great thing to remember! So often, we try so hard to hit every learning style that we miss the biggest one: visual! Have you used or seen the See, Think, Wonder chart for writing about something? I’ve used this in several lessons to great success. Give students a topic or a character, show them a picture that relates to that topic or character and then have them write down ideas in 3 categories: what do they see, what do they think about that image, and what do they wonder about because of that image. After they get as many ideas down as possible, students can then begin writing and already have a beginning, middle and end that allows for rich, thoughtful work. This is also great for checking for comprehension. Thanks for your helpful post!
Susan,
I love the idea of the See, Think, Wonder Chart. I have done Beginning, Middle, End charts before but that one sounds so much more interesting. Thanks for the great suggestion!
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