Reading Comprehension Lesson Design: Visualization
Rationale:
Comprehension is a very important goal of
reading.
Visualization is a means of learning comprehension. Students need to
learn to
visualize the text as they read. By doing so, they will paint a picture
in
their head of what is going on in the text. This is important because
it will
help students to remember the story and comprehend the book. This
lesson will
help students listen to and read stories while visualizing the text,
thus
comprehending the story.
Plain white paper for students’
drawings
Crayons or colored pencils for
students’ assessments
Grading Rubric/checklist (Did
the student draw a picture? Does
the picture relate to the first chapter?
Does the picture relate to characters or setting?
Is the picture interpretable? Does the
picture display detail? Does the picture portray
comprehension of the first chapter?)
Procedure:
1.
Good Morning
fellow astronauts. Today
our mission is to Mars. Be sure to buckle your seat belt and enjoy the
voyage. There
will be many things to observe on this trip so be sure you pay close
attention
to what is around you. Ready --- here we go. If you notice to your
right, we’ve
only been gone a few seconds but it seems like earth is so far away
already
doesn’t it. On your left you will see the great ball of fire; we know
it as the
sun. Alright, we’re getting close, be sure you’re still buckled cause
its gonna
be a rocky landing. Here we are. You can unbuckle now and exit the
shuttle to
your right. Look at the landscape. Notice how very different it is from
Ok, you can open your eyes now.
2.
I am going to
call on a few of you and I want you to tell me what you saw in your
head (call
on 2 or 3 students). Sounds like you all
saw different things. That’s pretty interesting! Does anybody know what
we call
it when we picture things in our head? (Students might say
imagine,
brainstorm, picture, dream, see, or other things. Be sure that you let
them
know those answers are all correct but that visualization is a word
that means
the same thing).
3.
Visualization is
a very important thing that we do in our brains. When we hear things,
we have
this great ability to see things in my head. When I say “there is a
bowl of
fruit on the table”, in your head, you might visualize a wooden bowl
with
bananas, apples, oranges, grapes, and pears. Or you might visualize a
ceramic
bowl with only bananas in it. Visualizing is fun, because we get to use
our
imagination. When I visualize a fruit bowl, it doesn’t look the same as
the
fruit bowl you visualize.
4.
Even though many
times we all visualize things different, visualizing can help us to see
the
same thing. Listen to this description of a fruit bowl: On the table
there is
sitting a red, oval, ceramic bowl. In the bowl there are bananas that
are not
yet ripe, some red grapes, and granny smith apples. Now, I bet
everyone’s
visualizations are a little more the same.
5.
Visualizations
also help us to find things and figure things out. If I asked Jim to go
to my
desk and get the red binder with a yellow post-it on top, he would
visualize
that in his head. When he gets to my desk, he would look for what it
was he had
visualized.
6.
Well, we’ve
talked about how important visualization is and how much fun it can be.
Do you
know that visualization can help us to be better readers? How do you
think that
visualization might help us to read stories better? (Allow a few
students
to give answers). That’s right, when we
read a sentence, if it has a description then we can visualize it in
our heads.
When might visualizing be very important in a story? That’s right, when
we are
learning about the characters and setting. When I read the sentence
“Tom was an
adventuresome little boy, ragged around the edges,” I visualize a short
little
boy with dirty blond hair that hasn’t been washed in a while, wearing
overalls
that are ripped and rolled up on one leg. Now I bet that your
visualizations
were a little different.
7.
Today, we are
going to start reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and this is
a great book
to practice our visualization. Pay close attention to all the details
in the
story because they are great and will help you visualize the story. You
will laugh;
I’m sure, because of some of the things you visualize. After we finish
the
book, we will watch the movie and see how our visualizations compare to
how the
movie company visualized the movie.
8.
I want you to
read the first chapter in Tom Sawyer and when you are finished,
you will
draw a picture to show me what you visualized as you read this section.
You can
let me know about the characters or the setting or a specific scene,
but use as
much detail as you can. I should be able to look at your picture and
tell you
what it look like and give a description much like what you visualized.
Assessment:
Allow students enough time to read the story and draw their
pictures. They will turn in the pictures that were drawn. The pictures
should
be graded using the following guidelines as a checklist:
Did the student draw a picture?
Does the picture relate to the first chapter?
Does the picture relate to characters or
setting?
Is the picture interpretable?
Does the picture display detail?
Does the picture portray comprehension of the
first chapter?
Reference:
RETURN TO GUIDELINES