Transcript Visualizing - SharpSchool Redirect

Visualizing
A Motion Picture in the
Mind
What Is Visualizing?
“As you muse over a poem, read a novel, or
pause over a newspaper story, a picture
forms in your mind. Certain smells, tastes,
sights, and feelings emerge, depending on
what you’re reading and what life experiences
you bring to it. Information comes to you
through your senses. This technique triggers
a wide range of memories and feelings.”
Susan Zimmermann
What Happens When You
Listen to the Radio?
“If you can create that
motion picture while listening
to the radio, you can do it while
reading a book.”
“Sensory images are the
cinema unfolding in your mind
that makes reading threedimensional.”
Susan Zimmermann
Author’s Words
+
Your Schema
=
Mental Images That Enhance
Understanding of the Text and
Bring Life to Reading
“When readers create mental
images, they engage with text in
ways that make it personal and
memorable to them alone.
Anchored in prior knowledge,
images come from the emotions
and all five senses, enhancing
understanding and immersing the
reader in rich detail.”
Keene and Zimmermann
Is Visualizing Really Important When
Reading?
1. Read “Ballad of Birmingham” to yourself.
2. Reread the poem and track images that you
have in the margins of the page.
3. Turn to a friend and share your thoughts.
4. Answer the following questions:
-How did visualizing help you to better
understand the poem?
-Did sharing your visualizations with others
help you to better understand the poem?
-Did you and the others you shared with
have different visions of the same text?
Visualizing…
• Allows readers to create mental images from
words in the text
• Heightens engagement with the text
• Links past experience to the words and ideas in
the text
• Enhances meaning with mental imagery
• Stimulates imaginative thinking
• Enables readers to place themselves in the story
Stephanie Harvey
More Benefits of Visualizing
• Improves literal comprehension of both
narrative and expository text
• Increases the ability to elaborate on
characters, scenes, actions, and ideas
• Heightens enjoyment of reading
• Helps in solving spatial and verbal problems;
e.g., story problems in math, process
descriptions
• Improves test scores on various reading
measures, including standardized tests
Gambrell and Koskinen 2001; Wilhelm, 1995, 1997
for research review
“Visualization has been successful in
improving comprehension monitoring, a
skill integral to expert reading,
identifying main ideas and justifying
these with evidence from a text, and
seeing patterns of details across a
text or texts to discover complex
relationships. Recent NAEP studies
show that fewer than six percent of
our high school seniors can effectively
use these skills.”
Reading is Seeing, Jeffrey Wilhelm
“Even cursory use of instruction
supporting visualization improves scores on
standardized tests... I work in schools and
know the political realities of test scores.
Some ingenious studies (see especially
Rose, et al, 2000, and the Arts Education
Partnerships Critical Links study, 2002,
www.aep-arts.org) have shown that
imagery use has many benefits, including
higher standardized reading scores
relative to control groups.”
Reading Is Seeing, Jeffrey Wilhelm
“There are many smart,
competent people who don’t
create sensory images when
they read. As a result,
reading is often a chore to be
avoided.”
7 Keys to Comprehension, Zimmermann
Can Students Be Taught
to Visualize?
The answer is YES!!!
“When you give students long
blocks of time to use comprehension
strategies as they practice reading,
magic happens in the classroom.
Students become more engaged. And
with engagement comes deeper
understanding.”
Susan Zimmermann
“Showing students the thinking side
of reading teaches comprehension.
When you model how you think as you
read, students learn how to talk and
write about their thinking. When you
give students long blocks of time to use
comprehension strategies as they
practice reading, magic happens in the
classroom. Students become more
engaged. And with engagement comes
deeper understanding.”
7 Keys to Comprehension, Susan Zimmermann
What Is the
Director’s Role?
The director models the use of
visualizing to better comprehend
texts through thinking-aloud.
“Stars on the rise” are then given
opportunities to apply the same
strategy in their own reading, first
with help from the director, then
the director gradually releases the
responsibility to the stars.
We know that…
“Better learning will not
come from finding better
ways for the teacher to
instruct, but from giving the
learner better opportunities
to construct.”
Papert, 1990
Tips for Directors
• Mental images are connected to your life experiences
and memories.
• One image leads to another, helping you to develop a
deeper appreciation of what you read.
• Mental images bring forth not only still snapshots of
reading but smells, tastes, feelings, and chills and thrills
as well.
• Reading becomes three-dimensional when you call on
your sensory images.
• Sensory images help you remember what you read as
you personalize characters, scenes, plot lines, social
studies facts, and so on.
More Tips for Directors
• When your reading camera shuts off, it’s a
warning that there might be a breakdown in
comprehension.
• Watching words unwind like a movie in your
mind helps you stay with the book longer. You
want to “see” the extended story or watch how
science facts unfold.
• Using sensory images helps you move from a
literal interpretation of the story to inferential
thinking. You’ll see the concrete representation
in your mind’s eye, and then extend the image to
new thinking.
7 Keys to Comprehension, Susan Zimmermann
Director’s Prompts
• What impressions of the people and settings are
forming in your mind?
• Where did the story take place? What is it like
there? What kinds of buildings, trees and so
on, do you see?
• Does it matter where the story takes place?
Could it have happened elsewhere or anywhere?
Does it matter when the story happened?
• What do the characters look like? How are
they dressed or groomed? How do they walk,
stand, gesture, interact, or display emotions?
• What kind of details help you to envision the
story? How are these connected to your life or
reading experiences?
Reading Is Seeing, p.65
Scene 1, Take 25
How Do We Know If Our
Stars Are Oscar Ready?
If a student…
• Begs to be read to and bugs you to keep
reading once you start
• Talks about the book and gives you details
when asked to tell about the story
• Laughs or cries at appropriate places
• Makes predictions about the story
• Reads aloud with expression
• Describes the characters to you
• Extends the story, going beyond what is on
the page
Then…
The student is more than
likely creating sensory
images and visualizing.
If the student…
• Shows a lack of interest in reading or
being read to
• Is unable to put into words a description
of what has been read
• Lacks interest in whether the story is
finished or not
• Cannot describe the characters, setting,
or what is happening in the story
Then…
The student might not be
creating sensory images.
Encourage students to go back
through the text to check their
mind pictures, and remind them to
check their thinking with someone
else if it doesn’t make sense.
Visualizing is a strategy that
enhances understanding, but if ill
conceived, it can just as easily
hinder understanding.
Silent Night
Is it “round John…” or “round yon
virgin?”
How Does the Director Help a Rising
Star Who Has Misconceptions Which
Hinder Understanding?
Questions Directors May Use to Help
Rising Stars Reveal Their Thinking
• What did you see when you read those
words? Does having this picture in your head
make reading more fun? How?
• Where is that picture in your head coming
from? What words in the text helped you
make that picture? How did your background
knowledge add to the details of this mental
image?
• Great! You’ve marked a spot where you were
confused—where you couldn’t see what’s
going on. Why do you think your “camera”
shut off? What will you do to get back on
track?
More Questions for Directors
• Have your sensory images changed as you read this
story? What words added detail to your mind
picture?
• You’re reading a nonfiction book today. What did
the author do to help you grasp the facts? What
does it look like in your mind? Oh, you see a
comparison of the size of these two plants?
Please share with the class how even charts can
paint pictures in our mind.
• I noticed you’ve highlighted this poem where the
author used powerful nouns and active verbs. Did
these words help the poem come to life in your
mind?
7 Keys to Comprehension, Susan Zimmermann
How Do I Know When I Have
Reached Stardom?
I create pictures or films in my imagination as I read,
noticing what characters look like, where the action is
taking place, etc.
I visualize scenes or details not described, picturing
what had happened to the characters before the story
began.
I picture myself in the book, meeting the characters and
being part of the scene.
I often draw as I read, depicting visual images of what I
see in my mind.
I comment on the way the writer presents or withholds
information.
I notice how the text is organized.
I role-play and enact scenes of the story as if I were in it.
I combine and connect ideas, and I am able to formulate
my own thinking.
I notice the vocabulary, the style, the “wholeness” of the
selection.
I negotiate, agree with, or argue with the writer’s ideas
and opinions.
I use images from my own experiences to help me
create a picture of the text.
I connect to the emotions and the senses described in the
text.
I identify words and phrases in the text that help me see
in my mind the characters, places, and events.
Literacy Techniques, David Booth
What Props Are Needed to
Be Oscar Ready?
• Variety of print—picture books,
poems, newspaper articles,
textbooks
• Pictures and graphics, including
magazines, journals, websites,
multimedia texts, maps
Visualizing
Quote from Text
What I Visualize
Quote from Text
What I Visualize
Strategies That Work, Stephanie Harvey
Adapting Mental Images During Reading
1) My image now…
2) and now…
3) and now…
4) and now.
Mental Images
My image
My image after having a
conversation with _______
Reading with Meaning, Debbie Miller
When Will the Stars Be Ready
for the Oscars?
“Sensory images play a valuable monitoring
role. Once a child understands that there should
be a movie running in her mind, she realizes that
something isn’t right when that movie stops or
gets fuzzy. She is aware that she isn’t
understanding and can stop, reread, look up
certain words, or ask for help to get back on the
comprehension track. Then the movie can start
rolling again.”
7 Keys to Comprehension, Zimmermann
“It’s like you’re in the book, but you’re
invisible and you’re watching everything
but the characters don’t notice you.
Sensory images are like a movie in your
head, but if you’re just reading words,
you won’t get a movie in your head, so you
have to reread. Sensory images make
reading a lot of fun. If you’re reading and
then take your eye off the words, you will
say, ‘What’s happening?’ And then if you
reread, you will get your movie back, but
if you keep reading, you won’t get your
movie back.”
Grace, a second grader
Credits
Booth, David and Larry Swartz. Literacy Techniques for Building Successful Readers
and Writers. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers, 2004.
Boyles, Nancy N. Constructing Meaning Through Kid-Friendly Comprehension Strategy
Instruction. Gainesville, FL: Maupin House, 2004.
Gallagher, Kelly. Deeper Reading: Comprehending Challenging Texts, 4-12. Portland,
ME: Stenhouse Publishers, 2004.
Harvey, Stephanie and Anne Goudvis. Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension
to Enhance Understanding. York, ME: Stenhouse Publishers, 2000.
Keene, Ellin and Susan Zimmerman. Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a
Reader’s Workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997.
Miller, Debbie. Reading with Meaning: Teaching Comprehension in the Primary Grades.
Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers, 2002.
Wilhelm, Jeffrey D. Reading is Seeing: Learning to Visualize Scenes, Characters, Ideas,
and Text Worlds to Improve Comprehension and Reflective Reading. New York, NY:
Scholastic, 2004.
Zimmerman, Susan and Chryse Hutchins. 7 Keys to Comprehension: How to Help Your
Kids Read It and Get It! New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2003.