Reading News and Information

If you were only one inch tall, you’d ride a worm to school.
The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool.
A crumb of cake would be a feast
And last you seven days at least,
A flea would be a frightening beast.
If you were only one inch tall.

As you read the lines above from the poem One Inch Tall by Shel Silverstein, what images came to your mind? Our class drew pictures and wrote about what we visualized as we read the poem. (Hopefully you saw this assignment in last week’s Take Home folder.) Visualizing is creating mental images while reading. The forms may include smells, tastes, sounds, emotions, and sight. Good readers form images to enhance their understanding and to remember and enjoy what they are reading.

Recently I read several stories to the students, stopping at key points so that they could use a technique we call Think / Pair / Share to compare their visual images. During the lessons using this strategy, students had the opportunity to learn that each reader creates unique images of the same text.

Comprehension strategies such as visualization are taught and applied from beginning reading instruction to university literature courses. So far this year, our second grade students have also been developing the comprehension skills of determining importance and making connections.

Making connections requires students to connect what they know from their own experience to what they are reading. As stories are read in class, students stop to Think / Pair / Share their answers to questions such as:

Did you connect to a character or something that happened in the story? How?
Has anything in your own experience helped you understand the character or story?

We recently read the story Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. This book elicited many strong connections from the second-graders. As the children shared their own “no good, very bad” experiences, it was quite obvious that they had empathy for Alexander when all of his friends had desserts in their lunch boxes but he did not.

Students are given opportunities to apply a comprehension strategy after several lessons, modeling by the teacher, and supported practice. Each child practices the strategy using text at his or her own instructional reading level. This is the point at which differentiation takes place.

Reading comprehension skills also help children develop good writing skills. Many students are becoming skilled at adding detail and description to their writing- they have developed an understanding of how language is used to create mental images. They are beginning to learn to think like writers!

Books which encourage visualizing:

Miss Rumphius, Barbara Cooney
Tar Beach, Faith Ringgold
Tales of a Gambling Grandma, Dayal Kaur Khalsa
Night Sounds, Morning Color, Rosemary Wells
Night in the Country, by Cynthia Rylant
The Napping House, by Audrey Wood
Creatures of the Earth, Sea, and Sky, by Georgia Heard

Books which encourage connections:

My Great Aunt Arizona, Gloria Houston
Amazing Grace, Mary Hoffman
Ira Sleeps Over, Bernard Waber
The Lotus Seed, Sherry Garland
The Good-Bye Book, Judith Viorst
A Beach Day, Douglas Florian
A River Dream, Allen Say
The Day of Ahmed’s Secret, Florence H. Parry