What is visualizing?

Visualizing is…

• A reading strategy• A way to help you understand what you

read• An important tool for reading fiction and

nonfiction

• Making a picture in your mind

How do you visualize?

• You use the words in the text to make a picture in your mind

• It’s like seeing a “movie in your mind”

• Visualize this:

A green tractor

Your mental image

• How was your mental image different from the one on the screen?

• We use our background knowledge to help us visualize what is in the text

• Different people bring different background knowledge, and so they visualize differently

Try this:

The purple flowers bloomed, lifting their petals up to the sun. They were surrounded by the bright green lily pads that covered the surface of the pond.

Can you picture this scene in your mind?

Did your mental image look like this?

The purple flowers bloomed, lifting their petals up to the sun. They were surrounded by the bright green lily pads that covered the surface of the pond.

More practice!

• Make this picture in your mind:

A grassy path led into a garden of tall grasses, black-eyed susans, and purple coneflowers .

Was your mental image like this?

A grassy path led into a garden of tall grasses, black-eyed susans, and

purple coneflowers .

If your mental image was different, why? What did you add or change? How did your background knowledge affect your mental image?

Now try this!

• The sleek, modern museum rose at the end of the parking lot. A tower that looked just like an airport control tower glistened in the center. To the right curved a silver, round building. A tree was to the left.

How did you do?

•Which details were probably most important?

•Which were the easiest to visualize? Which were the hardest?

The right picture?

• Because each person has unique background knowledge, everyone will visualize differently

• However, you need to make sure that you are using the text clues to visualize

For example…

• This picture would not match the details of the paragraph at all!

• The sleek, modern museum rose at the end of the parking lot. A tower that looked just like an airport control tower glistened in the center. To the right curved a silver, round building. A tree rose to the left.

This is neat, but why?

• Why visualize?• Here are three reasons:

– Visualizing helps us to process text more actively. Because we have to use our prior knowledge to visualize, we are reading more carefully

– Visualizing can help you to figure out what is going on in the story

– Visualizing is fun!

Using prior knowledge to visualize

• Visualizing is making a picture in your mind based on the text. But authors don’t explain every single detail. Sometimes, you need to fill in with your background knowledge.

What do you have to fill in with your background knowledge?

Far in the distance, a group of ponies huddled in the surf, flicking away the biting insects with the swishing of their tails. Excited visitors watched them from the further up the beach, taking pictures and chatting.

Try visualizing the scene below:

Here it is!

• Did you picture sand? Even though it wasn’t mentioned in the text, your prior knowledge of the beach helped you to make an accurate mental picture.

• If you’ve been to Assateague, you were probably able to picture the ponies. If you haven’t, your mental picture was probably different.

Pay attention to an author’s clues!

• Sometimes what we read will not match our prior knowledge. Read this:

The fences and fields of Shelburne Farms stretched down the gentle slope toward the barn.

But…

• The fences and fields of Shelburne Farms stretched down the gentle slope toward the barn.

• But this was not a regular barn. Instead, it looked more like a palace. One round turret towered over the side wall.

Here is the clue!

• The fences and fields of Shelburne Farms stretched down the gentle slope toward the barn.

• But this was not a regular barn. Instead, it looked more like a palace. One round turret towered over the side wall.

What a difference!

• Notice that this barn does not look like the barns that you have in your prior knowledge. If you kept on thinking about a regular red barn, you would miss out on an important detail

You can visualize whenever you read

• “What a day for a class trip!” Ricky said.

• “I know. I can’t wait to get back in the boats and go canoeing some more,” Ana replied.

• “I just wish it weren’t so cold,” Ricky sighed.

Try sketching what you visualize based on the dialogue below.

What are some things that you drew in your picture?

• Based on your prior knowledge and the clues in the text, what did you put in your picture?

• Canoe

• Lake

• Forest

• Students

Here’s one idea

• Does this look like the scene you pictured?

• What elements are similar? Different?

What have we learned?

• Visualizing is an important reading strategy

• We need to use the author’s clues and our own prior knowledge to build a mental image

• Everyone builds unique mental images

• Authors leave clues to let us know when our prior knowledge will not be a help