5strategies for reading. I'm constantly asking my students to
predict,summarize, chunk, visualize, and .... Visualizing is
something that Ihave pushed a lot with any novel or text that my
students are working on a natural way to get kids to think and
visualize what they are reading is to ask them to draw it. There is
tons of research on how drawing is proven to help students learn better
and make content more meaningful, blah, blah, blah... I use it as a
trick to make learning fun AND force students to think about the text.
( I'm one sneaky teacher, actually I believe most teachers are sneaky!
We have to be.)We draw A LOT. Below is example of how I
have incorporated drawing/visualization into lessons about many
different novels and topics.
To Kill A Mockingbird - Drawing The Radley Place
I asked my students to draw a picture of the Radley House by using
textual evidence from the book. I directed them to specific pages
that contained different descriptions of all aspects of the house.
Students had to open their books, reread different passages, and then
create their drawing. They had to include very specific details, like
the color of the house and shutters, items in the front AND back yard,
and where the house was located. ( it's down the street from the
Finch's and backs up to the school yard) I have the students a list
of guideline and the rubric I was going to use to grade them. They
had to use color, and it had to show effort and neatness. I know not
all kids are artists ( I' m certainly not!) so they had the option to
label anything they had a hard time drawing. But some kids ARE artists,
and I received beautiful work. I hung the most accurate drawing
around the room. Kids didn't even realize that they were using
textual evidence to create their drawing ( It's been a huge battle in
my room to get kids to believe that textual evidence is a real thing)
but they got to enjoy themselves while letting their creative juices
flow during class time.