" . . to read a book is to create a book. To read a book is to listen, to visualize, to see. If the readers, child or adult, cannot create the book along with the writer, the book is stillborn." - Madeleine L'Engle
Why teach children to visualize? As Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis say in their book Strategies that Work "(it) brings joy to reading." How many of you have sat through the movie release of your favorite book just to find that it falls flat in comparison? The beloved protagonist is missing their allure or that one moment from the book that you replayed in your head a dozen times is missing the setting, smells, and feelings that were evoked in your mind as you read. When we visualize we are creating our own mental movie and it is often the reason we connect to the stories - sometimes crying and laughing along side the characters. We see what they see and feel what they feel. And then - since it's in our mind- we have the freedom to add to that image to make it even more personal. Maybe a soundtrack accompanies the words, or perhaps that hero evolves into having the disheveled hair of your spouse, or perhaps the vengeance you feel towards a grade school bully is directed towards the villain.
When readers visualize they use words from the text, add it to their schema, and then create a mental image in their head. Visualizing, like inferring, asks readers to combine text evidence with their prior knowledge. Many students do not realize that they are in fact making inferences when they visualize. I teach visualizing before inferring, as I think it is a good stepping stone to the work I will ask them to do in that next unit. When I teach my students about making mental images I am always asking them to bring it back to the text and cite the evidence that influenced their mental images. When students are visualizing, their mental images are concrete and they are taking the "right there" information to make their pictures, whereas when we start inferring I expect them to go beyond the text.
So, as with all my units I start by having my students explore the strategy through some of the concrete ideas presented in Tanny McGregor's book Comprehension Connections. As the students walk in on our first day with this new strategy they are greeted by an assortment of "out of place" objects. Seashells, an apple, a sand pail, some mittens . . .
Then I provide each student with a "visualizing tube." I ask them to zoom in on one of the objects and look at it closely. As they are viewing it's details, I probe students to image it in the context of where it belongs. What would they see, smell, and hear near it? Then I ask them to record this mental image.
After visualizing, I group students who have chosen the same object. They compare their drawings, noticing how even though they all picked the same object they saw it in a different context. For example some students were picking apples off a tree while others were handing it to their teacher as a gift. This is our first realization that our schema influences our mental images.
Finally we end this lesson by connecting it to our work in reading. Here are the words Tanny McGregor suggests using with the kids: "Sometimes when you read, the writing helps you focus on something. Your brain can see it clearly, as if you were right there. Not only can you see with your mind, but sometimes you can smell, taste, hear and feel as well. We call this visualizing, or making a mental or sensory image. We have the ability to create these sensations in our heads, just be reading the print on the page. It's like magic! Being able to visualize makes reading so much more fun. Turn and talk to a friend about a time when you read something or someone read to you, and you could actually see or feel what was going on in the text." (Connections, 93)
Next, we begin discussing how words influence our mental images. I launch this through music. First, I play Let It Snow. As the music plays, I ask students to close their eyes and listen. As they listen I ask them to shout out words they are hearing that they are also seeing in their heads. I try to catch what they say in a quick sketch. Once the song ends, students open their eyes and look at what I captured based on what they said. We go through the picture and talk about what words they heard and label those items in the picture (storm, snow, fire, corn (for popping), me, you). We also talk about why we included things that weren't in the song (snowman, Christmas tree, icicles, stockings, moon). We realize that our mental images are made up of not only the words we hear, but also what we have in our schema (i.e students know this is a Christmas Carol, so they inferred the setting - Christmas time - and what they would see during that time of year. I do not explain that they are inferring yet. I just want them to realize that visualizing happens when we add text clues to our schema to make a mental image.
Finally, students practice on their own with another song. We listen to the song twice. On the first listen students simply draw. On the second listen I ask them to label the words they heard that they drew into their picture. Some songs I use are: Under the Boardwalk, Under the Sea, Over the Rainbow, Zip a Dee Doo Dah, and Monster Mash.
Check back soon to see how we take this into text!
