Visualization is an important comprehension strategy to teach growing readers...and it's a fun one! Visualization= drawing, right? I love teaching visualization, but I always end feeling like it's "to each his own" kind of strategy without any real accountability. In my second grade curriculum, readers are required to create a visualization drawing from a specified piece of text, and then label the visualization with key words from the text. Simple enough, but so many were still not getting it. So this is what I did... I gave my students a simple non-fiction passage about the animal called an okapi (which you can download here or by clicking on the photo below). I chose an animal that I knew my students wouldn't be familiar with prior to reading. This would ensure that they weren't relying simply on prior knowledge. We read the text together, and discussed it. I projected the text, using think-alouds to identify key words and interesting facts. Okapi Passage Next, students reread the text to themselves (or with me in a small group). After reading, students drew their visualizations. Finally, they cut apart the text to label pieces of their visualization. Students had to find text details and glue them onto their drawings to label the parts of the drawings. This reinforced identifying important details and held students accountable for the contents of their visualization. I required my students to label at least 5 parts of their illustration using text details. They did a fabulous job! Take a look at some of these examples! After we finished, students compared visualizations with the other members of their table groups. They found out that they had a lot of the same things drawn and labeled. Lightbulb moment! They were similar because they were using text details and finding important information! Win-win! It was a pretty simple lesson, but it hit two important reading skills at once. What's your favorite way to teach visualization and/or identification of important text details? I'm always looking for new ideas. Save this idea for later by Pinning it!
