Show your students how they are able to make mental images while listening to a story. Teaching the comprehension strategy can be so much fun. Why not involve art in the lesson to make it "visual"?
This lesson was my follow-up lesson to my Nightsong by Ari Berk lesson in which I taught students how to use Visualizing Bat to help them "see" the story. I decided that for this choice the author was most important. I needed the author to do a great job of "showing" the story with their beautiful words. I chose the book Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. What a great example to superb writing!
With this lesson, the idea was to introduce a tool for creating mental images while listening to a story. I explained that I wanted to read the story aloud, but would not show the pictures while reading. The idea was for the students to create their own visuals of the story.
They grabbed their pencils, colored pencils, and paper and off we went into the world of owling.
After reading the story, I gave the students time to complete their drawings in order to add details they "saw" and scenes they thought were described vividly.
We then shared our drawings and explained what we "saw".
Here are some examples from my 3rd Graders:
This lesson was my follow-up lesson to my Nightsong by Ari Berk lesson in which I taught students how to use Visualizing Bat to help them "see" the story. I decided that for this choice the author was most important. I needed the author to do a great job of "showing" the story with their beautiful words. I chose the book Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. What a great example to superb writing!
With this lesson, the idea was to introduce a tool for creating mental images while listening to a story. I explained that I wanted to read the story aloud, but would not show the pictures while reading. The idea was for the students to create their own visuals of the story.
They grabbed their pencils, colored pencils, and paper and off we went into the world of owling.
After reading the story, I gave the students time to complete their drawings in order to add details they "saw" and scenes they thought were described vividly.
We then shared our drawings and explained what we "saw".
Here are some examples from my 3rd Graders:
The next day I posed this question to the students...
"How do you think we were able to create these pictures in our minds?"
We discussed this until we came to the conclusion that Jane Yolen gave us these pictures by using very descriptive words.
I then gave each student a graphic organizer to help show them how this was possible and what the actual words were that "showed" us these images. (Click on the image to get the graphic organizer.)
"How do you think we were able to create these pictures in our minds?"
We discussed this until we came to the conclusion that Jane Yolen gave us these pictures by using very descriptive words.
I then gave each student a graphic organizer to help show them how this was possible and what the actual words were that "showed" us these images. (Click on the image to get the graphic organizer.)
We began reading the story aloud, and as we came to parts of the story that described portions of our pictures, we stopped, marked it with a sticky flag and wrote down the exact words that helped us to "see" it.
We then wrote in the next section what we "saw" in our own words.
To tie it all together, we labeled each one with a number. Then located the drawing portion of that image and labeled it with the coordinating number.
This helped us to see how much we really saw in the story. How much of it was important to the story? Did we see the whole story? How did drawing it help us to understand the story? How did this activity help us the understand (comprehend) the story? What would we do differently next time we listened/drew a story?
Here are some examples:
We then wrote in the next section what we "saw" in our own words.
To tie it all together, we labeled each one with a number. Then located the drawing portion of that image and labeled it with the coordinating number.
This helped us to see how much we really saw in the story. How much of it was important to the story? Did we see the whole story? How did drawing it help us to understand the story? How did this activity help us the understand (comprehend) the story? What would we do differently next time we listened/drew a story?
Here are some examples:
Notice the reflection note on the second one. He decided after doing this evidence activity that he didn't really listen to the whole story. He decided that next time he would try to add some important details from the end of the story and not focus so much on drawing perfectly. (Good observation...good goal!)
To find this lesson and the graphic organizers visit my
Teachers Pay Teachers website at:
www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Literacy-Link
Enjoy!
Jenny
To find this lesson and the graphic organizers visit my
Teachers Pay Teachers website at:
www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Literacy-Link
Enjoy!
Jenny