In one of my intervention groups, we are working on the skill of visualizing as a reading strategy. These are 3rd and 4th graders that I'm working with, so at this point, they are reading more advanced text and focusing so much on the reading that they are putting less effort into comprehension.
Visualizing is one of those reading strategies/skills that isn't ever specifically mentioned in the Common Core Standards, but it is a critical reading comprehension strategy for kids in K-5. I browsed Pinterest for some Visualizing anchor charts and decided I didn't need to recreate my own when there were so many great ones out there (and let's face it… I can't draw, and visualizing is one of those that requires a smidgen of drawing!) Here were some of my favorite Pinterest finds…
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| From Fabulous Fourth Grade |
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| From the Debbie Diller Site |
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| Source Unknown (If it's yours, let me know!) |
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I also created 8 Visualizing Task Cards (Download them here for FREE) to use with my kids to practice their visualizing skills. I used them in a variety of ways…
- I began reading the cards sentence by sentence. After each sentence, I asked the students to verbalize what they were visualizing. I particularly likes card #6 and #7 for this one!
- I read the card to them, then I asked them specific questions about what I just read. The first time around, most of them didn't know the answer. I read it again, asking them to really focus in on visualizing the details. Sometimes I had to read it three or four times. (When I do this, I read the entire card at once, asking them to build the image).
- Depending on the number of sentences in the paragraph, I had my kids divide a piece of paper into sections. I would read each sentence, and in one section, the students would draw what they visualize based on the sentence. I would read the next sentence, and in the next section, they would draw their new visualization. I was so disappointed in myself that I didn't take a picture of this because it was so neat! I loved how the drawings evolved for card #7– the kids thought they were talking about a beach right up until the very end.
You could easily use these with partners in a buddy station, and you could also use them as mini inferencing task cards (Aren't the borders adorable? They are from The Bubbly Blonde's new Border Shop!)! I hope you can find a use for the cards!
