Reading

Comprehension

Teaching students to visualize while

reading.

Four levels of Metacognitive

Knowledge:

Tacit readers

Aware readers

Strategic readers

Reflective readers

We must teach students to:

Track their thinking

Notice when they lose

focus

Stop and go back to

clarify thinking

Reread to enhance

understanding

Read ahead to clarify

meaning

Identify what’s

confusing about the text

Think critically about

the text

Match the problem with

the strategy that will

best solve it

Strategies used by Proficient

Readers:

Visualizing Making Connections

Asking Questions

Drawing Inferences

Determining Important Ideas

Synthesizing Information

Visualizing

Readers create “movies” in their minds.

Visualizing

Visualizing enables a reader to make the words

on the page real and concrete. It is the ability

to create a movie of the text in your head.

When students create these “movies” while

reading, their level of engagement increases

and their attention doesn’t flag.

When readers visualize it…

Allows them to create mental images

Enhances meaning with mental imagery

Links past experiences to the text

Enables readers to place themselves in the story

Strengthens a readers relationship to the text

Stimulates imaginative thinking

Heightens engagement with text

Brings joy to reading

Teaching children to visualize

Use wordless picture books

Merge prior experience and the text to create

mental images

Use non-fiction trade books (with pictures) to

make comparisons

Use all senses to comprehend text

Good Readers Picture What is Happening

Thinking Stems I’m picturing…

I can imagine…

I can feel… see… smell… taste…

touch… hear…

My mental images include…

Visualizing

Take a trip to the movie theatre

in your mind as you enjoy

reading with your child each

day!