One of the traits of good readers is their ability to visualize in their head the events of the story they are reading. It is likened to being able to paint a picture in your head. While adult readers may take this skill for granted, developing readers must work to build this skill.
Over the past two weeks we have been reading various books, discussing the pictures we may see in our head, and then drawing those pictures. We then compare and contrasted how each student visualized
the story with other students and with the book's illustrator.
In one story,
Thirteen Moons on Turtle's Back, each student took one of the short stories, drew a picture of what he or she visualized, and then placed that
picture on "turtle's back."
Today, we took the skill of visualizing, and started weaving it into their writing. When students are writing, they often have a very good picture in their head of what they are writing about. Unfortunately, this mental picture does not always
make it onto the page.
To help build the skill of writing descriptively, the students used the computer and looked at some of the most famous paintings in the world, and "tagged" them with descriptions that they wrote. This was their first attempt at this and they were asked to be as specific as they could. It is a difficult skill for students and we will continue to work on it as the year goes on. One sample of the work is below. To see other samples of the students' work, and read their "tags," you can click
here.
