Help your class experience a powerful comprehension adventure on a compelling voyage of visualization.
Sometimes the mechanics of reading—word analysis, comprehension questions, problems & solutions, causes & effects— take over a student’s mind so that visualization is denigrated to less importance.
Visualization is the process that we can use to take printed information and turn it into a potent adventure in our minds.
To an engineer, that might mean a chart of electric + and – currents to follow. To a novelist, it might mean a story map of characters and plots. To our students, visualization can spark their imaginations while also improving comprehension and motivation.
Using specific details from text, students can develop their own pictures. It is so much better than having it done for you in a cartoon or a movie. How many teachers show that stupid cartoon of Charlotte’s Web after reading the book in class? Soooooooo boooooring!!!! The pictures children make in their minds while reading this book are sooooooo much better!
We all know we are much more interesting to ourselves than anybody else, so our own take on the words we read is important, especially to us.
What does that main character look like to me? How do I use the author’s description to make a picture in my mind? What is his expression when something bad happens to him? Or something good?
How many times have you been disappointed when the character in a movie didn’t look like you had imagined while reading the book? Was her laugh too irritating? Was his smile too toothy? Was the setting too dark or some events left out?
Visualizations that students have developed after reading novels and poetry have been my most powerful class activities.
We often made story quilts after sequencing events from Charlotte’s Web, the best children’s book of the 20thcentury:
Charlotte’s Web Story Sequencing Cards
We visualized many books, in paint and crayon, but here are two more:
My favorite poetry visualization project was made into a one-minute iMovie for a previous April (Poetry Month) post:
I hope you like the video. Please consider helping your students engage in the energy and intensity of visualization as your next project.
The rewards are mighty!
Enjoy the flight!
© Reading Spotlight 2025
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