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Visualizing A Reading Strategy for Better

Comprehension

How many of you day dream?

What do you day dream about?

Are they in color? Or black and white?

Visualizing

What is visualizing?

Visualizing is creating images in our mind based on the information we read.

Visualizing as we read makes us better readers.

How does visualizing makes us better readers?

1. Good readers spontaneously and purposely create mental images during and after they read using their prior knowledge.

2. Visualizing helps the reader understand the text better by seeing it in his/her mind.

How does visualizing makes us better readers?

3. Visualizing helps readers know when they don’t understand something because they will notice when their visualization doesn’t make sense.

Visualization can help all students improve comprehension.

Close your eyes and try to visualize what is going on in the

following passage.

"That very night in Max's room a forest grew and grew and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and the walls became the world all around."

Where The Wild Things Are

By Maurice Sendak

What did you see?

Close your eyes and try to visualize what is going on in the

following passage.

It was Canada Day, the first of July, and we had our boat out on the river. In the distance we could see the fireworks high above the city. They were so bright they lit up the night sky, and their brilliant colors were reflected in the water.

What did you see?

Using the Strategy

Using the Strategy:

1. Look for adjectives (describing words)

These are the words that describe size, shape, colour, taste, and so on that help create mental pictures.

2. Look for verbs (action words)

Words like run, slide, or stroll can help you “see” what happens and how it happens.

Using the Strategy:

3. Read carefully to find comparisons

Does the author compare something unfamiliar to something you already know? For example, comparing a whale to a school bus helps you understand just how big a whale can be. Look for comparisons that can help you “see” familiar things in a new way. The lake glistened like a dish of diamonds.

Using the Strategy:

4. Add what you already know

Use your prior knowledge either about the subject or the words to add to your picture.

5. Edit your picture

Read on. Use new details to change or make your picture clearer.

Take Note:

Our experiences help us to visualize. If you have never seen a sun rise, clear blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, or fireworks on a clear night, it might be difficult to picture these things in your mind.

Take out your visualizing page and a pencil.

While you listen to the following passage, draw the images that are created in your mind on paper.

"The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It smelled of grain and of harness dressing and of axle grease and of rubber boots and of new rope. It was full of all sorts of things that you find in barns: ladders, grindstones, pitchforks, monkey wrenches, scythes, lawn mowers, snow shovels, axe handles, milk pails, water buckets, empty grain sacks, and rusty rat traps. It was the kind of barn that swallows like to build their nests in. It was the kind of barn that children like to play in."

- Charlotte's Webb

By E.B. White

One last thing...

We don’t just visualize when we are reading stories. We also visualize to help make sense of the poems we read or the music we listen to.

Listen to the excerpt of the following song.

What pictures do the lyrics create in your mind?

Everybody – Backstreet Boys

Let’s watch the video.

Does the video match what you had visualized?

Everybody – Backstreet Boys