Comprension Strategy: Visualizing

It's our twelfth day of school in NYC and I'm so glad! I'm tired of routines and I'm happy to be teaching. This week the kiddies started learning about visualizing. I love teaching this concept! I start out having them close their eyes as I describe opening a lollipop step-by-step. I describe what what they would hear, smell, taste, feel, and see. You could practically see the kids salivating over the lollipop in their imagination :) After that we discuss why visualizing is necessary to understand our stories, and how to make a mental "movie screen".  I modeled with part of a book called "Raspberries: A Tale of Cooperation."  While I read, I give out jobs for the kids.  One group makes a mental image of what they see in their mind, one group focuses on what they hear, one with smell, and one with feel.  We discussed taste but didn't add it to the chart.  Here's what we created:

They write a V on the post-it to represent visualizing.

While the kids read independently I have them work on this sheet:

For homework the students read a book and sketch a picture of what they visualized.  Then they write what they saw on their mental movie screen.  If you're interested in doing the 5 senses worksheet and the visualizing homework sheet, you can find them here:

 Visualize With Your Five Senses