Checklists and Process Sequencing from
Using the Visualizing Brain
to Enhance Reading Comprehension &
Retention
… or …
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Betsy Lockhart
www.lockhart-learning.com
[email protected]
Checklists for Classroom Use
Weekly Visualization Memory Game: Objects to Picture (mental image) Stage
Phase I
Place a diverse collection of items on a tray, covered with a cloth.
Begin with as many objects as the average age of children participating
With repetition, work up to having a dozen items on the tray.
Remove the cloth.
Offer 30 seconds to observe: no touching/talking; walking around is OK
Recover the tray.
Children use paper/pencil; “show what is on the tray”. Note learning style clues:
- who is making a list?
- who is writing the names of objects in relative position to one
another as they were arranged on the tray?
- who is drawing the objects?
Once children finish, ask detailed questions; cause them to access visual memory
- mostly adjective-type questions (color, shape, number, etc.)
Reveal the objects on the tray once again for self-check.
Discuss process, encourage children to make mental photographs / movies
Phase II
“Up the Ante”. Decrease the diversity of objects so that
- all are one shape
- all are one color
- all used to write, draw, paint (etc.)
Repeat the process as above.
Once children finish, ask questions to cause them to access visual memory
- mostly adverb- / preposition-type questions (where, direction,
orientation, which is on top, etc)
Reveal the objects on the tray once again for self-check.
Discuss process, encourage children to make mental photographs / movies
Phase III
Now all objects on the tray have a common theme
- things found on a beach
- items mentioned in a spy novel
- foods
- dollhouse furniture
- Egyptian artifacts
Repeat the process as above.
Once children finish, ask the children to identify the theme of the tray
Reveal the objects on the tray once again for self-check.
Ask, “If this tray illustrated a book, what would be a good title for it?”
Discuss process, encourage children to make mental photographs / movies
Weekly Visualization Memory Game: Picture to Picture Stage
Phase I – Line drawings
Children pair up and are seated such that in each partnership:
- Child 1 is looking forward towards the teacher
- Child 2, seated between Child 1 and the teacher, is looking at Child 1
Child 1 ! " Child 2
Presenter
Child 1 is looking at the teacher; Child 2 cannot see the teacher
and is looking at Child 1.
Teacher reminds children to turn on their visualizing brains.
Teacher reveals a large colored line drawing (cartoon) picture.
Each “Child 1” describes the cartoon to his/her partner - “Child 2” - with
as much vivid detail as possible.
As the room begins to quiet, meaning most children have finished their
description, teacher verbally ticks through the following keywords.
Children may amend their descriptions by adding any information they
wish, based on these keywords:
absolute size
relative size
color
number
shape
location
movement
mood
background
perspective
smell
sound
time of day
time of year
Once Child 1 is satisfied that s/he has created a vivid image in Child 2’s
mind, Child 2 turns around o look at the picture, then gives feedback to
Child 1 about what was surprising about the picture. “OH! I didn’t
envision it like that…”
Children trade positions and jobs, with the teacher showing a different
large colored line drawing (cartoon) picture.
Repeat as above.
Phase II - Photographs
Repeat the above sequence of activity, this time using a photograph
rather than a colored line drawing (cartoon) picture.
The new challenge is that there is a lot more detail in a photograph. The
describing child will have to decide what imagery is most important and
what to leave out.
Weekly Visualization Memory Game: Text to Picture Stage
Phase I – Read-Aloud, Sentence-by-Sentence
(Adapted from Lindamood Bell’s wonderful Visualizing and Verbalizing)
Originally a 1-to-1 remediation technique.
• Read one sentence at a time and wait for the children to form a mental
image.
– May ask lots of contrasting questions.
– Prompt the children using the same keywords used previously to
enrich their mental images with sound, smell, movement et all.
• Associate each sentence with a different colored square (anchor).
• Encourage children to turn their “still pictures” into movies, as you
reread the paragraph without pausing between sentences.
• At the end of the paragraph, ask the children to give a picture
summary; describe their visualization of each sentence in turn.
• Ask the children for a word summary of each sentence.
Ask gestalt questions to confirm comprehension of the content.
Phase II – Child-read (silent reading) Sentence by Sentence.
The process is the same as the above, except that the individual sentences
are posted or projected, one sentence at a time, for children to read
silently. Each sentence has a color anchor, just as before.
In the workshop, we experienced this with a paragraph from A Wrinkle in
Time by Madeline L’Engle.
Phase III/IV – Read-Aloud and then Silent Reading: “Chunked Reading”
The process is repeated, first as a read-aloud and then as silent reading,
where children receive little essays of a couple or three paragraphs, each
of which have only 2-3 sentences. There is one color square per
paragraph.
Most children won’t need this level of coaching. Once they get their
Visualizing Brain working, it usually becomes self-sustaining.
Applying Visualizing in Writing: Well-Written Descriptive Paragraphs
Phase I – Isolate the Difficulty by Isolating the Senses
Through a series of activities, lead the children through the experience of
writing about each sense in isolation. The direct aim of this lesson is less
about the writing and more about the observing! Here are just a FEW
ideas on the subject. Have fun with this!
SOUND
Auditory journal
Take the children outside. For 15 minutes, they capture everything that
they hear by describing it. The only rule is that they may not write
what the object is making the sound. No naming, but similes and
metaphors are ok. For example,
- “Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, like a three fingered typist on an antique
keyboard.” (Woodpecker pounding on a tree trunk)
- “Rhythmic ‘squeak/squawk, squeak/squawk, squeak/squawk’. ‘Come
on! It’s my turn’.” (Children on a swing)
Children can share their descriptions with one another author’s-chair style.
Onomatopoeia
Explore onomatopoeia and onomatopoeia poetry
SMELL and TASTE
Olfactory / Gustatory “Who-am I?” game
Break the class into groups. Each group goes to an isolated space where
they are given an edible with a strong aroma: popcorn, coffee, balsamic
or cider vinegar, cotton candy, a carnation, etc..
The group brainstorms descriptors that can be literal or impressionistic.
They can convey what the item is used for but not its name. For
example:
“It smells like morning: hot, dark, pungent, aromatic, earthy, eye-opening.”
<coffee>
Groups re-gather and present their sentences or lists. Other children
guess what the food is that the group is describing. If this seems too
challenging, turn it into a matching game, where children know each of
the foods being provided, but not which food went to each group. As
they hear each of the descriptions, they work to match the description to
the particular food.
TOUCH
“It’s Made of What?” Game
Discuss with the children what it would feel like if one’s clothes were made
of sandpaper. Or Jello.
Alone or in groups, children go on to choose what element of every day life
(clothing, furniture, dishes, food, etc) were to made of something with an
unusual tactile expression. Children love the absolute silliness of this,
and will enjoy sharing their descriptions with lots of animation!
Alternatively or additionally, give children bags with objects of different
textures and have them first describe them in writing – either as a list
or as a paragraph - and then guess their identity.
Phase II – Integrating the 5 Concrete Senses
Show! Don’t Tell! “It was a very messy room.”
Provide each child with an 8” x 10” photocopy of a minimalist room, like
this:
Discuss who might live here and what this room says about the person.
Now encourage the children to discuss what the room would look like if a
very messy person lived there. What might you find in this room? Dirty
laundry? A half-eaten pizza? Papers and pencils and books everywhere?
A wet towel? Toys? What would suggest that it had been a LONG time
since the room was cleaned – a spider web? Did a soda spill long ago,
drying into the carpet, making it feel crunchy?
Using a regular graphite pencil, the children sketch in whatever mess they
wish, adding to the picture.
Add color to items that have a particularly prominent smell or sound or
feel.
Once the children are content that their “room” is sufficiently messy, have
them plan the screenplay of a film clip of a camera (equipped with Smello-Vision and Feel-o-Vision) entering the room. As the videographer
approaches the room, what sense hits first: can s/he smell or hear
something before s/he can even see the room? When the videographer
turns the corner to enter the room, what does the camera lens see first?
What does it feel like, sound like, smell like as s/he walks through the
room?
Once the screenplay is planned, children can write their truly descriptive
paragraphs.
Phase II – Adding a “Sixth Sense”
WHAT IS AN EMOTION?
Laying the Groundwork: Identifying Emotions
More and more children today are finding it difficult to read facial
expressions and identify emotions. Many teachers find that direct
instruction using a product like Onionhead Cards (a deck of 150 cards
including 75 with heavy feelings and their transformative 75 light
feelings) helpful groundwork for classroom management and conflict
resolution. These and other forms of direct instruction on emotions and
body language also help with reading comprehension and writing with
elegance!
ADDING EMOTIONAL COLOR TO WRITING
Emotional Identity Game
Writing a descriptive paragraph that illustrates concrete object or
setting is challenging in and of itself, as we have seen. It is important,
then, when asking children to include reactions and emotions of the
characters in their stories, that some time is spent writing in isolation
about how people (or animals!) show emotions. This can be initiated by a
matching game, where the teacher provides descriptive sentence cards
and word cards with a single emotion listed. The game is to match the
descriptive sentence to the emotion. For example,
A flush rose from her feet up through her whole body, turning her
cheeks bright red as she cast her eyes toward the floor.
… matches …
embarrassed.
If your children are still working to understand the vocabulary of
emotions, having a picture card to match can be a bonus.
If you find that you give this lesson and the children need still more
work, divide the children into two teams. The teacher provides a
descriptive sentence and the teams try to guess the emotion. After each
emotion, discuss why the sentence revealed the emotion. Have the
children act out that emotion. Then go onto the next sentence.
“Show; Don’t Tell!” Emotions
If you have engaged your children in the previous two activities, you can
look about those as being like the first 2 periods of a three-period lesson,
with this lesson as the 3rd period. Here children show what an emotion
looks like in a character. In the lesson, they pull a card and act it out,
like charades, for their friends to guess. Then ask them to follow-up by
writing sentences that illustrate / describe the emotion indicated on 5-10
cards.
Phase IV – Integrating the Senses in Verse
Sensory Poetry
Pattern:
(a color that represents that emotion)
(what that emotion looks like)
(what that emotion sounds like)
(what that emotion smells like)
(what that emotion tastes like)
(what it would feel like if you held it in your hands)
(the emotion)
Example:
sunshine yellow
shooting stars
giggle giggle giggle
fields of fragrant lavender
tangy
tickles
joy
Phase V – Integrating the Senses – 6-Sense “Show; Don’t Tell” Paragraphs
RECOGNIZING SENSORY IMAGERY IN OTHERS’ WRITING
Image Hunt
Provide text that is rich in sensory like the following paragraph. Have the
children underline visual images in one color, auditory images in another
color, and so on. Each of the six senses gets a unique color. Discuss
their results and the overall quality of the paragraph.
The counter was set with military precision. In front of each
cherry red vinyl stool, a napkin, fork, and spoon were set in perfect
alignment with shiny white coffee cups and saucers. The stainless
steel cases gleamed like the sun. In the display cases, even the
peaks of the whipped cream that topped the pies stood at
attention. The air was filled with sweet, sugary scents mingling
with the dark, pungent aroma of fresh coffee. At the end of the
counter sat a woman that contrasted in every manner with her
surroundings. In the glare of the neon lights, her face was almost
indistinguishable from the jumble of grey and brown threadbare
scarves that obscured her form. She extracted a dime from an
unseen pocket and began to scratch, scratch, scratch the silver
squares of a lottery ticket, keeping time with the ticking clock on
the wall. A minute later her shoulders sank and a heavy sigh
escaped her cracked lips. She pushed the useless ticket to one
side. Her hand disappeared into the folds of the scarves and then
emerged with a second rectangular cardboard ticket. Scratch,
scratch, scratch the seconds passed. Another sigh. Another
minute gone, and with it, another bit of hope.
RECOGNIZING SENSORY IMAGERY IN OTHERS’ WRITING
“Show; Don’t tell!” Revisited
Children can now return to the “Show” paragraphs that they wrote before
the sidebar on emotions. (Turn a tell sentence - “It was a very messy
room.” - into a show paragraph.) The can either revise that paragraph
(likely unpopular) or create a new one!
Appendix (do not remove☺)
Visualization is the process of forming a mental image of something.
• making “a movie in your head”
• rich visualizing - more than just sight
• “Visualize”: think envision as the root word, rather than vision
• “Sensorization”
Mental Imagery in Reading
Mark Sadoski, Texas A&M University
“The mental imagery that we experience while reading, either
spontaneously or induced by instruction, is now known to have
powerful effects on comprehension, memory, and appreciation
for text. This may seem self-evident today, but it was not long
ago that purely language-based theories of cognition and
memory prevailed. If imagery was recognized at all, it was held
to be incidental and of little importance…”
Turning on all parts of one’s sensory brains is not always automatic, but it
can be trained.
6-Sense Checklist: RICH Visualization
Visual
Auditory
Olfactory
Emotional
Gustatory
Tactile
Sequence for Visualization Training
Concrete 3-dimensional objects
Concrete 2-dimensional representations
Abstract stimuli: reading
Oral
Print
Applications in writing