Ep 47: Teaching Visualizing was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best audio automated transcription service in 2020. Our automated transcription algorithms works with many of the popular audio file formats.
Hey, teachers, if you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Rachael, and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers who want actionable tips, simple strategies, and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go. Hey there.
Welcome to another episode of The Classroom Commute Podcast, I'm Rachael your host. Welcome if this is your first time, thank you for joining us. If this is not your first time, welcome back. I'm so glad that you decided to spend a little bit of your day with me today. I want to jump right into today's topic because we have a lot to cover. I know that many of you do listen to this podcast on your way to school and only have a few minutes to spare so I don't want to waste your time, I want to get right to the good stuff.
Now, a few episodes ago, I introduced a new podcast series that I was going to be doing once a month, all about reading comprehension strategies. We begin this series back in Episode 41, where I introduced how to teach reading comprehension strategies as a whole and a strategy for how to approach it in your classroom. It may be different than maybe what you are used to so if you didn't listen to that foundation episode, I would encourage you to do so because it does set the tone for the rest of the series. Then in Episode 42, we talked specifically about how to teach making connections. You can check out that episode as well, I will link to both of those in the show notes.
Today, we are going to dive into how to teach visualizing sometimes called picturing in the upper elementary classroom. Now, I may use the words "visualizing" and "picturing" interchangeably, because as I mentioned back in Episode 41, all about how to introduce reading comprehension strategies. I mentioned a book that I really loved that I read early on in my teaching career called Constructing Meaning through Kid-Friendly Comprehension Strategy Instruction. It's a mouthful of a title, but it's by Nancy Boyles. It is a really, really great foundation for how to teach reading comprehension strategies. In the book, Nancy Boyles talks about how we should be using kid-friendly language like picturing alongside the traditional language, which is visualizing so that students don't get hung up on the language and the vocabulary itself and prevent them from being able to fully understand it. I might use those words visualizing or picturing interchangeably, and you might consider doing the same to in your own classroom.
Now, as adults, it's hard to imagine not visualizing when we read, right? It comes so naturally to seasoned readers, but for kids, they may not have been taught to focus their mind in that way. It's sometimes easy to forget that we need to explicitly teach students how to do it. That's where a clear reading comprehension strategy instruction on visualizing or picturing, as I refer to it, is super important. I want to begin this episode by talking about some things that we as teachers need to consider before we teach the reading strategy of visualizing to our students.
One of the most common ways to teach students how to visualize is to describe it as creating a picture or a movie. In our mind, we want students to constantly be adding, changing, tweaking, and revising their mental images. Just like in a movie, it's constantly evolving from scene to scene and in fictional texts, readers should visualize the setting, visualize the characters and even the actions of those characters. In doing so, readers will have a better understanding of the story as a whole. In nonfiction texts, we want our readers to visualize the details about the topic or even visualize the event in history in order to fully grasp the concept. Visualizing isn't something that readers should be doing periodically. It's something that they should be doing on going for the entire length of the story. Although the strategy is called visualizing, we should encourage our students to use all five of their senses when appropriate to really get the best mental image. For example, we don't want students to just picture what the character looks like, but also what they sound like using the details of the text. We want to encourage students to do this. If the character is eating their favorite food, we want students to imagine what that food smells and tastes like too and by doing so, they will get a better understanding of what's going on in the text. One of the best things about the visualizing strategy is that there really is no right or wrong answer. When readers visualize as they read, they rely on information from the text that we all have, but also from their prior knowledge to create mental images of what's going on in the story. Each reader is going to create unique images and that's OK. These mental images are going to be unique because every reader has a unique perspective and different prior knowledge that they're bringing to the text with them. It's important to keep this in mind as you begin thinking about how you'll introduce this strategy to your students, because you don't want to assume that students will have a specific image or picture in their mind because they may not have had an experience that lends themselves to have that picture or image in their mind.
All right. Let's talk about some ways to introduce the visualizing strategy to your students. Now, I mentioned back at the beginning of this series in Episode 41 that you should be introducing reading comprehension strategies up front, all seven of them from the beginning of your instructional time. Whether that's the beginning of the school year or whenever you begin teaching reading comprehension strategies to your students. Students should have a basic understanding of what at least the visualizing or picturing strategy is before you actually practice it with them in the classroom. The concept of visualizing is typically easy for students to understand, especially if you compare it to something like a movie. In your mind, students can typically grasp that concept. When you start introducing this to your students, you can do it through a really simple drawing activity. Gives students something specific to draw, but don't offer them too much detail about what it should look like. For example, you might ask students to draw a clown, a beach scene, or a house. Give them just a few notes of information that they need to know and allow students to draw the object or the scene as they imagine it in their mind. Then allow students to share their drawings with a partner. This is going to help illustrate the idea that we all visualize something different because our experiences are different. Someone who has been to a circus might have a different image than a student who has only seen a clown on TV or in books, or someone who has never been to the beach may not have a full understanding of what it's like. Our experiences inform our mental images. I love using this quick drawing activity as your starting point for introducing visualizing to your students. I think it's important to start here with the understanding that all of our experiences are different and therefore our mental images are going to be different because it helps students to realize that it's OK if their image in their mind is different than yours or their peers. Actually, it's a gift that we all have different mental images because we can all share those experiences with each other and enhance each other's understanding. Let's help our students see this as a good thing.
Then you're going to actually begin modeling how to visualize to your students teaching reading strategies. Any reading strategy usually starts with modeling through a read aloud text. You're going to want to choose a text to share and be certain that you pre-read the book and prepare some places that you'll be stopping to model the mental images that you're creating in your mind. As you read, you may want to have a whiteboard or a chart paper available to actually draw or have the drawing prepared ahead of time if you want to save some time. But you want to have that image available to show your students to explain what your mental images are. You can also draw your mental images on Post-it notes and place them on the actual page in the story that sparked that mental image and then share those Post-it notes with your students. Again, these images can be drawn in real time or prepared ahead of time to share with your students as you get into that part of the story. Here's where you really want to make sure that as you're modeling, you showcase all five senses when describing your mental images so that students become familiar with using their senses for their visualizing reading strategy. As students become more familiarized with the strategy, you can invite them to share their own images using five senses during the your read aloud. You can have them even jot them down on Post-it notes as well and share them with a partner. Continue to remind students how our mental images will vary because our experiences vary. And of course, your modeling of how to use the visualizing strategy is only going to be as good as the books that you choose. You want to make sure that you choose books that are rich in descriptive language and detail. Some of my favorites and I will link to these in the show notes are "A Bad Case of the Stripes" by David Shannon, "Color Me a Rhyme" by Jane Yolen, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" by Judy Barrett and "The Salamander Room" by Anne Mazer. I will link to those in the show notes. Those are just some of my favorites that I've used in the past that really help to support visualizing.
Of course you modeling the reading strategy and even invite students to participate in some shared experiences during a mini lesson is just the tip of the iceberg. You really have to get students practicing this strategy individually and in guided reading groups as well. One of the easiest ways to help students to always have the visualizing strategy in the forefront of their mind is to give them some simple visuals to have always in front of them. Whether your students are in guided reading groups, strategy groups, or independent reading, it's helpful to have something like a bookmark or a poster to help remind them to use the visualizing strategy. Often I love using bookmarks for student reminders because they have it right there in front of them and they're using it in the books that they're reading. It's constantly going to remind them to use the visualizing strategy. I've created a free visualizing bookmark. It's over in our Members Resource Library that you can download in the reading resources section. If you are already a member, head over there now and grab it. If you're not a member, you can head to classroomnook.com/resources, I will also link to it in the show notes to sign up to become a member and grab this bookmark. The bookmark simply includes a definition of what visualizing is in kid-friendly language. It also gives them some pointers about what they are to visualize. On the book mark it says, "I can visualize the story of a setting, how a character looks and acts, an event from the story or details about the topic." Just having this in front of students, will be a constant reminder to use that reading strategy. I also like to have these same guidelines and details about how to visualize on a poster that I would use to create a quick display in my classroom that students can always refer to as well. Having a visual reminder, like a bookmark or a poster is a great starting point to remind students to visualize.
Another important thing that I always like to have my students do is to record and share their mental images. Having students draw their mental images not only helps keep them accountable while they're reading, but it also helps them to better apply the strategy when drawing. Encourage students to add details using all five senses and when explaining their images to someone else. Students should rely on those five images to help describe their thinking. You can also encourage students to include a written description of their mental images as well. This will help them to articulate their thinking and to help you assess their application of the strategy and thinking of assessing. We know as teachers that assessment informs our instruction, so it is important to keep notes of what you observe your students doing as they use the strategy in whole group, small group and individual settings. Here are some things that you might want to be looking for as you're assessing students ability to visualize. How detailed are their descriptions? Do they use all five senses? Do the details they describe accurately portray what the text says? Do they visualize the most important parts of the story? Are their mental images not relevant? That is a huge indication as to whether or not they're using the strategy to really enhance their learning and their understanding of the text or if they're just doing it because they know they should be doing it. Also, this one's important, do they need you to prompt them to use the strategy or do they use it without assistance? Because that is going to be the ultimate determining factor on how effective your reading comprehension strategy instruction is in their learning and their reading.
When it comes time to see how a student is performing with this reading strategy, I like to use a rubric to help give me an understanding of how they're doing. I like to provide this same rubric to kids in kid-friendly language so that they know how they're doing and what areas they may need to improve on. For example, on my visualizing rubric, I have four levels of student performance. The top level I call a 4. You might call it something different, but at the top level, my rubric says, "While reading, I can create detailed mental pictures. I can clearly picture the characters, settings and details about the plot or topic in my book. When describing my mental image, I use all five senses sight, sound, smell, touch and taste." A level four is the top performing level that students can reach when visualizing. From there it goes down as far as the details that are provided or the amount of senses that they use all the way down to a level 1 where it indicates that the student is struggling to make any kind of visualizing or mental images at all.
Now, I have a set of resources that I'd like to share with you to help you teach visualizing to your students. I already mentioned the free bookmark that is over in the Members Resource Library. You can get to that by either going to classroomnook.com/resources or I will link to it in the show notes at classroomnook.com/podcast/47. Everything that I've mentioned will be in the show notes as well, including the link to this bookmark. I also have some other resources that you might find interesting and helpful to help your students learn how to visualize. Of course, it begins with a Visualizing LINKtivity. One of my signature resources that I love to create for students to help teach new information in an engaging and interactive way. These activities are especially handy for providing students with some concrete examples in a variety of ways. They're perfect for teaching reading strategies. In the visualizing activity, students first watch a short animated video clip that catches their attention with some fun doodles and images. The clip introduces the strategy on what it is and how readers use it. From there, students read alongside their virtual reading body inside the activity to see the strategy applied to a specific text while clicking through their LINKtivity Digital Learning Guide, their virtual reading buddy will model how they are using the visualizing strategy to fully understand what the text is saying. To take their learning to the next level, students are going to read three additional high interest reading passages to practice this strategy on their own in a similar fashion as they did with their reading buddy. Students will click through a digital storybook to stop and visualize along the way, and they have a recording sheet where they draw their mental images. Like I mentioned a few moments ago, I believe it's important for students to actually put their mental images down on paper and maybe even include a written description. This will help keep them accountable, as well as help you assess their full understanding of the reading strategy. This LINKtivity resource also comes with the bookmark that I mentioned, along with a poster, a kid-friendly rubric, as well as some teacher observation sheets that you can use to assess your students. It also comes with five days of lesson plans to help roll out this visualizing strategy to your students from start to finish. If you want to get your hands on that full resource, you can head over to the show notes at classroomnook.com/podcast/47 and I will link to it over there.
There you have it. How to teach visualizing to your students. Make sure you check out some of the other episodes in this series linked over at the show notes and look forward to next month where I will tackle another reading comprehension strategy so that we can help your students become stronger and better readers. I can't thank you enough for joining me today. If you have a quick moment, I'd love for you to leave a review of the podcast over on iTunes so that other teachers can come find us as well. If you haven't already hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss a single episode as it comes out each week.
All right. I hope you guys have a great rest of your day and an awesome start to your week. I will be back again next week with another episode. Until then, bye for now.
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