Why is visualization important in reading

However, some teachers have basically thrown out the curriculum's reasons for 'why' the scope and sequence is the way it is and have decided that the number of sight words taught is not rigorous enough so they've started much earlier in the year teaching additional sight words 'just because' they think we should.

I have felt for many years that we are asking our youngest readers to do more than what their brains can handle successfully. Just because some students 'can' doesn't mean all students 'should'.

Visualization is a big part of teaching sight words in K because those words don't follow the phonetic patterns we've been teaching. What are your thoughts on teaching sight words in K?

How many is too many? This is really interesting on so many levels, and you've given me a lot to think about. I'm wondering what the relationship is between visualizing just in your head vs.

My third graders really enjoy listening to a passage where I stop to allow them to draw and label. My favorite example is having them draw the inventing room in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is so rich with sensory detail and action verbs.

By using these terms to label, it allows me to introduce the importance of including these elements in their own story writing. Sometimes they draw on their white boards--fast and fleeting--and sometimes they draw slowly and meticulously with paper and color and create, in some cases, impressive illustrations. There's a technique in The Reading Strategies Book called 'Reread and Sketch with More Detail' which combines drawing and labeling with rereading so that students see what they may have missed the first time through.

Thanks for raising this issue. Hi Dr. Shanahan, What you have explained about visualization and the differences across grade levels when teaching this strategy is very interesting.

Would you recommend teaching visualization to1st and 2nd graders with an interactive read aloud lesson? Lynn Given that young children naturally visualize when stories are read to them and that beginning reading texts are so heavily illustrated, I would simply not introduce this strategy at all until the kids were a bit older.

Thanks Tim. Dear Dr. Shanahan, This is thought provoking. These students usually have little to no exposure to English; as their communities mainly use the native language for daily communication.

Such students may not connect with or even have any mental representation of what is read to them; that is, if they were lucky enough to get fluent models to read to them. Shanahan, do you think that teachers to such students should even consider trying out this strategy?

Thank you. Very thoughtful piece—thank you. Surely they learn to read, but I would imagine that visualization is either not there or different and that other modes auditory, touch might come into play?

Mabel-- My focus with second language students would be much more on language than on strategies like visualization. For example, using pictures to illustrate vocabulary has proven to be particularly effective with ELs. In other words, instead of trying to get them to imagine to visualize in their minds , I would focus on trying to connect the language with the concrete and truly visualized that is visualized with their eyes rather than their minds.

Good luck. Lara- Clearly, blind students cannot visualize at least if they are congenitally blind. That may be part of why those students struggle so much with comprehension. However, as my piece makes clear I hope visualization is more than just a visual strategy -- it also includes the other sensory systems sound, smell, touch, taste Interpreting text is partly verbal and partly sensory.

There is a physician who claims that there is a condition in which people whose sensory mechanisms are intact cannot visualize at all. That hasn't been proven -- and to my knowledge hasn't captured much scientific evidence -- but it is certainly possible that the blind aren't the only ones lacking this ability to see things in their mind. This is such a great finding. I teach reading comprehension grades to grad students and just told the dean that I wanted to take visualization out of my presentations What are the nuts and bolts of teaching visualisation?

Is it just drawing conscious attention to visual images that are arising spontaneously as students read or listen to text, fleshing them out and actively adding detail? Does it always rely on drawing? And equally, how would I know that I have added anything to what the students can already do? For ELs, there is a great visualization technique that helps with language acquisition. I select a descriptive passage of a certain number of words that contains a linguistic construction that needs repetition and and practice.

I then give art supplies and read the entire portion over and over again. Students recreate what they hear and then compare and discuss. There are many descriptions of this technique on the web.

Thank you for sharing the research. I'd like to support the ideas shared by Harriet and Mabel with my own anecdotal observations. In my work with schools in many parts of the country, teachers have found great success using the strategy of sketch-noting to support both comprehension and the ability to retell or summarize a text with their ELL and K-3 students.

I suggest providing a structure for using sketchnotes, such as a graphic organizer with open boxes for sequencing key events, When reading aloud, the teacher stops to give time for students to draw and label something to help them remember each part. Teachers might also brainstorm a few key words to use as labels at each stopping point which has been found to be especially helpful to ELLs..

With silent reading, texts can be "chunked" with an open box after sections that present multisensory images, with a prompt such as, "what can you picture in you mind right now? When we use the illustrations in a story to discuss what is happening during parts of a story, we are modeling the use of pictures to create understanding.

We ask students to visualize as soon as we ask them to draw a picture of their favorite part of a story. We ask them to visualize when they draw a picture of their own choosing and then ask them to tell or write about the picture. The thing that concerns me is when a reading comprehension program strongly teaches visualization. We were the directors of our own movie. All the resources you need for your classroom are a click away! This post contains affiliate links for your shopping convenience.

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A post about teaching children to visualize to build reading comprehension. Includes book suggestions, tips for implementation, and a free printable. Teaching children to comprehend and make sense of what they are reading is vital to building literacy. Going beyond teaching decoding strategies and how to build fluency, they need to be taught how to understand what they read through reading comprehension strategies, such as connecting, visualizing, questioning, inferring, etc.

Teaching children to visualize to build reading comprehension is so important. Visualizing is the ability to hear a story and have a mental image about the text. This helps the child create meaning for themselves in their own way based on their own previous experiences. Sign up for the sight word email series filled with tips to get you started teaching sight words in the best ways, strategies for success, and FREE activities kids will love. Everything you need to build reading skills with sight words!

Now check your email to confirm your subscription. Stay tuned for the poetry email series coming your way soon! Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Skip to main content Skip to primary sidebar Skip to footer All the resources you need for your classroom are a click away! Today I will share some of the lessons I use to teach children to visualize what they read.

We have been busy learning how to visualize when we hear stories. More to the point for teachers, guiding your students to visualize as they read is an engaging and enjoyable way to boost comprehension and retention. Learning to create brain movies can help students make sense of complex nonfiction subject matter and "see" the characters, setting, and action in stories. Teachers who use our strategy tell us their students seem to have more fun -- and success -- as they read.

These anecdotes are supported by research showing that students who are taught to develop mental imagery of text do better than control groups on tests of comprehension and recall. The research basis for the usefulness of transforming text into mental images can be found in Allan Paivio's dual coding theory , which holds that cognition consists of both a verbal system for language and a nonverbal, visual-spatial one for images.

By creating mental images from the words on a page or screen, we tap into both the verbal and visual-spatial representational systems, making abstract concepts more concrete and thus more meaningful and memorable. Visualizing while reading is a strategy that should be explicitly taught. The assumption that children are naturally imaginative may not be true for all students, and even those with vivid imaginations may need guidance in applying the active process of making brain movies to improve their understanding of what they read.

Follow these steps to introduce brain movies to your students:. Teachers who've used this strategy in their classrooms share these examples and tips for enhancing its effectiveness:. Florida teacher Kelly Rose introduced brain movies to a literature circle of fifth graders, beginning with the powerful language of poetry. After guiding students to picture the images in their minds as they read and reread the poems, Ms.

Rose then asked them to share what they visualized. Working with elementary students learning English as a second language, Georgia teacher Melissa Smith shares reading passages that demonstrate how writers choose their words carefully to help readers create brain movies.