Visualizing: Movies in the Mind Cornerstone/MCSD Professional Development

What is visualization? "Proficient readers spontaneously and purposely create mental images while and after they read. The images emerge from all five senses as well as the emotions and are anchored in a reader's prior knowledge." Ellin Keene and Susan Zimmermann, Mosaic of Thought So, as you can see from this definition, you continue to use schema as you introduce new strategies. Each strategy builds upon another and they all work together to build comprehension.

Why teach visualization? Visualization is an ongoing, creative act. Pictures, smells, tastes, and feelings burst forth, and the reader’s mind organizes them to help the story make sense. This ongoing creation of sensory images anchored in a reader’s prior knowledge keeps the reader hooked on reading. Readers use images to immerse themselves in rich detail as they read. The detail gives depth and dimension to the reading. Images from reading frequently become part of the reader’s writing. Evoking mental images helps readers create images in writing.

What are the results of teaching visualization? Reading is a satisfying activity. It brings the text ALIVE! “Comprehension of textual information increases when students can create detailed mental pictures of what they are reading.” (Muehlher, Sieman) Students who have saturated their lives with movies and video games have not practiced visualization. They don’t need to– images are provided. Reading then is “boring,” No one is providing the images for them. Students need to be taught to visualize so that reading is a satisfying activity. 4th BULLET: The mind stores information in two forms: linguistic and imagery. The words on a page constitute the linguistic form. Imagery consists of the mental pictures. “The more students use both systems of representation: linguistic and nonlinguistic, the better able they are to think about and recall what they’ve read.” Students are better able to think about and recall what they’ve read.

Concrete Experience Look at the object on your table carefully. Feel its texture. Smell it. Put the object away. Close your eyes and see the details in your mind. Draw a picture of the object or describe it in writing. For students in the most deprived sensory environments and especially for our younger students, we need to give specific training in visualization. We move from the concrete to the abstract.

Connect to Reading and Writing Sometimes when you read, the writing helps you focus on something. Your brain can see it clearly like you are there. Not only can you see with your mind, but sometimes you can smell, hear, taste, and feel as well. Where might this item belong? Visualize what sights, smells, sounds and sensations might be surrounding it.

Look the painting and write down words on post-its to describe sensory images you experience while looking at the painting. What do you feel? What do you hear? What do you see? What do you smell or taste? When you have recorded your sensory images, bring the post-its up and put on the chart.

Visualization: What does it feel like? Read several pages. Stop and have the participants turn and talk about their visualizations. Have them sketch on paper.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one, you will feel that all of that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. (Hemingway)