Visualizing

Happy Friday, pretty people! I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted! This week simultaneously went fast AND took forever!!

This week we've been working on the reading comprehension strategy, Visualizing. Visualizing is when the reader creates a picture/movie in his/her mind in order to better understand the story. I love teaching visualizing because we get to draw pictures!

First we read the book Do Not Open.

Visualize this: There is an old lady who lives by the ocean, and after a storm she likes to go out and collect the things that wash up on the beach and put them in her wheelbarrow. One day after a big storm, she finds a beautiful, purple glass bottle. Etched on the side of the bottle are the words: Do Not Open. A childlike voice asks, "What do you want more than anything in the world?" The old lady realizes the voice is coming from inside the bottle, and she can't bear to hear a child so sad. Should she open it? (This is when I stop showing the illustrations) Well she does, and out billows a black smoke and a scary, scary monster. 

Scary, right? I stopped reading the story before the monster turns into a mouse, and sent the students off to draw what they visualized. Later I reread the story and showed the pictures, and it was so cute to hear the bunnies compare their drawing to the illustrations.

So the next day we read The Napping House.

Who doesn't love this book? This time I showed no pictures and stopped just before the everyone started waking up. Here are a few drawings:

So cute!

Next week we'll wrap up visualizing. I don't spend a ton of time on this strategy because they hit it hard in Kindergarten and first grade. We'll watch the Into the Book video for this strategy.

I LOVE Into the Book! I love it so much I secretly want to be Mrs. Pingel. Oops. Not a secret anymore... And her Wisconsin accent is AWESOME! The kids love her too. They even sing along with the theme song... so cute! There is a fantastic FREE student section of the Into the Book website!!

Well, that's all folks! Happy weekend! :)