Picture This!

Visualizing to Improve Comprehension with Narrative and Expository Texts

Tara Bensinger Secondary Reading Coach Hoover City Schools

How Visualization Helps Students

Visualizing can help students  recall a sequence of information.

 solve and/or graph a math problem.

 test their comprehension of new vocabulary.

 draw and label diagrams, graphs, and experiments in science and maps in social studies.

 picture information.

 replay, reflect on, and comprehend information.

Research-Proven Reasons for Teaching Visualization • Visualization improves comprehension skills.

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 implied relationships. These are skills that, according to NAEP, fewer than 6% of our high school seniors can effectively use.

• Visualization improves test scores in reading.

Use of instruction supporting visualization improves scores on standardized tests. Studies have shown that imagery use has many benefits, including higher standardized reading scores relative to control groups.

( Wihelm, 2004 )

Social Advantages for Teaching Visualization

• Students read visual texts in may arenas: cartoons, television shows, movies, websites, as so on. We can value these resources to reach and teach them as readers and writers.

• Inviting students to create visual responses to texts is an effective bridge to other composing literacies such as writing and multimedia design.

• Visualization projects are interactive and invite students to collaborate and interact with one another, using their social nature.

• When students compose and explore ideas together through various literacies, they gain access to democratic avenues of meaning making. We apprentice them for real-world activities where they will be required to demonstrate their understanding in many ways, including making visual products.

(Wihelm, 2004)

Think-Alouds

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Think-alouds do the following: Give students the insight into how good readers and writers make sense of text.

Allow students to see options that are available to them. Students can see how other readers and writers decide what to do.

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Help students understand the complexities of reading and writing and that they are ongoing thinking processes.

(Tovani, 2004) Basic Ways to Conduct Think-Alouds

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Teacher does the think aloud; students listen.

Teacher does the think aloud; students help out.

Students do large group think-aloud; teacher and other students monitor and help.

Students do think-aloud as small group; teacher and other students model and help.

Individual student does think aloud in forum; other students help.

Students do think aloud individually; compare with others.

Teacher or students do think-alouds orally, in writing or in pictures, on an overhead, with notes, or in a journal.

(Wihelm, 2004)

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Activities for Visualizing From Words

Create mental images of observed concrete objects.

Bring in interesting objects and have students observe them. Have them close their eyes and imagine the most detailed version they can. Students open their eyes and compare mental pictures with actual object.

Create elaborate mental images of imagined concrete objects.

Ask students to visualize an absent concrete object with which they have previous experience. Now, use guided imagery prompts to have them create even more detailed versions of this object.

Envision familiar objects and settings from their own experience.

Have students imagine objects or scenes from home. Invite them to sketch a picture and take them home to compare to the real object. They can add the details to the drawing or amend if needed.

Add familiar actions and events, then relationships and settings.

situation.

Ask students to envision a familiar event or action, then build on it by putting it in motion or in a

Picture characters, settings, details, and events while listening to a story read or told aloud.

Read aloud imagery intense expository and narrative text and stop periodically to have students share their mental images.

Study text illustrations and use them to create internal images.

Discuss text illustrations of all kinds with students, how they work, how to use those mental representations to think with, and what to do when illustrations are not available.

Create mental pictures independently.

text.

Prompt students to create mental pictures as they read on their own. Invite students to create journal entries or drawings at strategic points in a (Wihelm, 2004)

Visualizing Words With Struggling Readers

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Writing in Sand or With String

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Drawing Word Representations

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Picture Flash Cards

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Information Gap Activity

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Vocabulary Tableaux

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Vocabulary Power Point

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Video Clips for Summarizing

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Video Clips for Exploring Literary Devices

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Games

(Wihelm, 2004)

Some General Visualization Prompts

• As you read, make pictures in your mind to help you understand and remember.

• Try to build images of people, places, interactions, events, processes, and ideas you read.

• Use memories and objects from your life experience to “see” what you are reading.

• Make a movie in your mind as you read.

• Try to recall the major scene, main idea, important process, and so on, from your reading by using an image or moving images.

• Use visuals to place hold major ideas and their sequence.

• Explain how and why visions or pictures develop and change with the introduction of new information. (Wihelm, 2004)

Activities to Support Visualization

 Drawing Visuals  Double Entry Diaries  Picture Mapping  Tableaux  Mind Movies  Closed Eyes Visualize  Symbolic Story Representation  Grab Bags  Sticky Note Snapshots  Visual Timelines, Flowcharts, Maps  Text-Picture Matching  Illustrating Texts