Making Movies in Our Heads

 Visualizing is the reading strategy known as “Making Mental Images or Creating Mind Movies”.  It creates images in the mind as the student reads, processes and recalls what has been read.  Visualizing allows the reader to organize their ideas, to see the relationship among the ideas, and to make meaningful connections with them. 

Visualizing helps students to:

©      use personal prior knowledge to aid in comprehension

©      check their mental images with the text to gain a better understanding of the text

©      connect to what is being read

Graphic organizers assist students to build the relationship between what they are reading and what they are seeing in their heads.  They are the best ways for us to teach children how to organize information and make their thinking visible to others.  Making these connections to the text activates a student’s prior knowledge and aids in their visualizing ability.  Remember as you are using this strategy at home that everybody’s mental image may be different and that is okay because we all have different pieces of prior knowledge we are using to build our mental images.

 

Questions, Questions, Questions!

      When a child uses questions while reading it helps them clarify ideas and deepen understanding.  Asking questions-even those that are unanswerable-enriches the reading experience. Remember when your child was 3 or 4 and every other word was “why”?  In a child’s quest to make sense of the world, they become master questioners. Why is the grass green? Why do we dream? What happens when we eat? Frequently, parents have no idea how to answer these endless questions. We had the tendency to just say “because” due to not knowing the answer ourselves, but we need to encourage our children to ask these questions and become little researchers to find the answers.  This constant curiosity keeps their imagination going like a well-oiled machine.  They are able to make sense of the world around them and begin to form their own opinions and new ideas based on the information gained from the answers to these in-depth questions.  Questions also allow, you as the parent, to engage with your child in discussions and deeper thinking. Begin to encourage your child to ask questions about what they read.  These questions can be divided into four different big categories:

Thin (right there) and Thick (think and search) questions.

Thin questions are important to understanding the story elements or facts about a piece of text.  These answers can be found explicitly in the text.

Thick questions provide the child with a quest.  They have to search for an answer or use their inferring strategies to deepen their understanding of the text.

 

Below are some question prompts you may find useful when asking your child “Thick” questions:

What if …? How did …?

Why did…?

What would happen if …?

What caused…? What might…?

How would you feel if you…?

What character traits describe _______?

Why do you think…?

Why is…?

 

The other two important categories for questions are Author and Me questions and On My Own questions.  The Author and me questions focus on information provided in the text but the student is required to relate it to their own experience. Although the answer does not lie directly in the text, the student must have read it in order to answer the question.  On My Own questions are questions which do not require the student to have read the passage but he/she must use their background or prior knowledge to answer the question.

     When you read with your child and model your own questions it allows your child to see how reading can be an exciting adventure.  Below are some additional resources for you to use with your child at home to encourage their natural curiosity.  Happy Questioning!

 

Becoming a Reading Detective Using the Inferring Strategy

Inferring is being a detective!  Use what you see plus what you know to figure out what the author is trying to tell you.

We use the strategy of inferring all day long, similar to “reading” people or “reading” a situation.   An example is if it has been raining outside and some cars have water on them and some cars do not, we infer that those without water have been parked in the garage. Inferring is often explained as, “reading between the lines” where the answers are not clearly stated. Inferring is like stopping and asking yourself “I wonder what the author meant?” Inferences are more open-ended and often don’t know if you are correct in your inference.  Students are using their prior knowledge to determine what is going to happen next in a piece of text.  When students use the strategy of inferring, they are making meaning of the text. They are adding pieces to a puzzle that are not in the text.  Inferring is simply like ripping out a page of a book and determining what happened on the missing page by thinking about what has happened so far and what they know about the characters and situations.

Some common sentence frames to use with your child, which will aid in their ability to infer, are: 

I think that...because...

Maybe it means...because...

My clues from the text are...

It could mean...because...

Within our classrooms, teachers commonly use what is called “Picture of the Day” to instruct students on the strategy of inferring. 

                                                                                                            Created by jenny Jones

If you go to the following blog, a more detailed description of “Picture of the Day” is provided for you.
http://helloliteracy.blogspot.com/2013/08/observing-describing-inferring-with.html

Reading Comprehension Strategies

READING IS THINKING!

While we read, we are constantly thinking about what we are reading, but with kids, we have to teach them to think about the reading.  Through explicit teaching, they learn how to make connections, infer, question, synthesize, determine importance, and visualize.  In the next 6 months, I will be teaching you how to support your child as they learn how to use these comprehension strategies at school and home. 

Making Connections
Children make personal connections with the text by using their schema. Schema is their background knowledge.
There are three main types of connections we can make during reading:

• Text-to-Self: Refers to connections made between the text and the reader's personal experience.
• Text-to-Text: Refers to connections made between a text being read to a text that was previously read.
• Text-to-World: Refers to connections made between a text being read and something that occurs in the world.

Inferring
Authors do not always provide descriptions about a topic, setting, character, or event. However, they often provide clues that readers can use to “read between the lines”—by making inferences that combine information in the text with their schema.

Questioning
This strategy involves readers asking themselves questions throughout the reading of text.

Synthesizing
Synthesizing is creating something new by gathering together information from the text.

Determining Importance
Determining importance has to do with knowing why you’re reading and then making decisions about what information or ideas are most critical to understanding the overall meaning of the piece.
Visualizing
Visualizing is creating pictures in your head while you read using the text as a support.

Preventing the Summer Reading Lag

"The more you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you'll go." –Dr. Seuss

“Research consistently shows that struggling readers fall even further behind over the summer months. Each year a wider gap is created between the higher achieving or more proficient and less proficient students, sometimes producing up to a two to three year reading gap. There are several things that we as educators and parents can do to close this reading gap” stated by Charity Kinner.

     As a mother of two, I have one who LOVES to read and one who will avoid it at all costs, and having a teacher as their mother does not make their lives any easier. I can’t seem to get away from the “teacher talk” even at home. Throughout the next year, my hope is to give you ideas and strategies which will empower you at home with some “teacher talk” of your own.
Below are some things you can do to prevent the summer reading lag.

Summer Reading Tips:

1. Remember reading does not have to consist of only books. Magazines and newspapers are also great resources for students to read. Non-fiction text promotes a high level of vocabulary development. The public library has a wide variety of magazines available for check out.
2. Books on tape or CD are fantastic. Put a book in the car CD player, and you can all listen to it.
3. Read a book with your child. I like to read chapter books aloud to mine, and then we can have conversations about the events or ask each other questions.
4. Cook together. Reading practical texts, such as recipes, correlates their reading with math application, as well.
5. Reading comic books are great for the reluctant reader.
6. Stay tuned for more information on an exciting new program coming NEXT summer….our mobile library.

Happy Reading!
Mrs. H.