What do you see?

Reading to Learn

Visualization

Tiffany Taylor

Rationale:

       One of the most important goals for reading is comprehension. To comprehend a story thoroughly children must learn to visualize. Visualization makes the story come alive in your mind and helps the reader makes sense of story events and remember them better. As children get older and become better readers the texts become longer and have fewer illustrations. During this lesson the children will learn to create their own illustration inside their heads.

Materials:

• Copies of “Thanksgiving Day Parade” by Jack Prelutsky
• Large white paper
• Copies of Thank you Sarah: The woman who saved Thanksgiving By: Halse Anderson

Procedure:

1. “I want everyone to be very quiet, and close your eyes.” “Be very still, I don’t want to see anyone’s eyes open, ssssssssshhhhhhhhhh.” “If you want to put you’re your head down you can.” “Okay now that everyone is quiet and relaxed I want everyone to think about their favorite place.” “Is everyone thinking of their favorite place? Keep your eyes closed; now I want you to picture it in your mind. Can everyone see their favorite place? Now I want you to think about the weather, is it hot or cold? Now think about how it smells, take a deep breath. Now picture yourself, what do you like doing at your favorite place? Imagine yourself doing it. Who is with you at your favorite place, is it your mom, dad, a friend, or are you all by yourself? Okay now I want you to open your eyes.” Wasn’t that fun to close your eyes and pretend you were at your favorite place? What we just did together is called visualization, Visualization is the pictures we saw in our heads, and it is very important when you read.
2. Then I will model closing my eyes and sharing what I see when I think about my favorite place. “When I think of my favorite place(with my eyes closed) I think of the beach, the warm air blowing in my face, I can smell the salty air. I am walking on the white soft sand and I can see the beautiful sunset over the water. I can hear the waves splashing against the beach and I can feel the warm water against my feet.” I will ask for volunteers to share about their favorite place and what they “visualized”.
3. “Now that you are getting older and becoming better readers you have started to read longer books with more words and less pictures. Just because a book doesn’t have a lot of pictures doesn’t mean it isn’t a good book it just means that’s it’s up to us as the readers to visualize as we read.”
4. I will hand out a copy of the poem to each child. “Now I am going to read this poem, ‘Thanksgiving Day Parade’ by: Jack Prelutsky. As I read the poem I want you to close your eyes and use your visualization skills to imagine what is happening in the poem. After reading the poem I will ask students to share what they saw, heard, and smelt as I read the poem.

Thanksgiving Day Parade

By Jack Prelutsky

Thanksgiving Day is here today,
the great parade is under way,
and though it’s drizzling quite a bit,
I’m sure that I’ll see all of it.

Great balloons are floating by,
cartoon creatures stories high,
Mickey Mouse and Mother Goose,
Snoopy and a mammoth moose.

Humpty Dumpty, Smokey Bear
hover in the autumn air,
through the windy skies they sway,
I hope that they don’t blow away.

Here comes Santa, shaking hands
as he waddles by the stands.
It’s so much fun, I don’t complain
when now it really starts to rain.

The bands are marching, here they come,
pipers pipe and drummers drum,
hear the tubas and the flutes,
see the clowns in silly suits.

It’s pouring now, but not on me,
I’m just as dry as I can be,
I watch and watch, but don’t get wet,
I’m watching on our TV set.

5. Then I will divide the class into five groups and pass out the book, Thank you Sarah: The woman who saved Thanksgiving By: Halse Anderson, one to each group. The book is 40 pages and I will have divided the book into five sections, and allow each group to read 8 pages. Maybe have each member read 2 pages. After the group is finished reading their section they will illustrate it on the paper that I provided. After each group is finished I will ask the groups to come up to the front of the class (In book order) to share their illustration and explain their section.
6. For assessment I will ask each child to create a poem book. They will be required to select 5 poems and illustrate them in a book form.  They can pick one poem and illustration to share with the class.  When grading them I will simply make sure that their picture relates in some way to teh poem and that they really put some thought and effort into the project.

References:

• The Reading Genie

Can you see it? By Laura Meadors http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/inroads/meadorsrl.html

• Anderson,Halse. Thank you Sarah: The woman who saved Thanksgiving. Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing; 1st edition, 2002.

• “The Thanksgiving Day Parade”   By: Jack Prelutsky

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/1133/holidaypoems/thanksgivingfun.html