Who: All Pre-K-8 faculty and students What: SIX THINKING STRATEGIES –Connecting –Questioning –Visualizing –Making Inferences –Determining Importance/Summarizing –Synthesizing Literacy Professional Development A Research Based approach to improving literacy in our schools

Strengthen and enhance student performance through “best- practice” thinking strategies and a common language used by the staff and students. Why: Why NOT?

VISUALIZING PAINTING A PICTURE IN MY MIND. USING ALL OF MY SENSES TO CONNECT TO THE TEXT

When we visualize, we take the words of the text and mix them with our prior knowledge to create pictures in our minds before, during, and after reading. Visualizing personalizes reading and keeps us engaged to make text memorable. Readers can also use their other senses to interact with sensory images that enhance our understanding of the text and bring reading to life.

Discussion: How do words in the text make pictures in the mind? How does the author show and not tell? Which sensory image is the text eliciting? Place yourself in the story. How does your imagination help?

Verbal or Reflective Journaling Responses: I get a picture in my mind… I visualized… I can see… I can taste/hear/smell/touch…

Visualizing Mini-lessons Reading aloud is a good way to help them learn how to visualize You might say, “make a movie in your mind” and ask the student to describe the scene Draw a part of the story or a series of pictures also enhances understanding Visualization is related to inference. When we create mental images we are inferring with pictures in place of words

VISUALIZING PAINTING A PICTURE IN MY MIND. USING ALL OF MY SENSES TO CONNECT TO THE TEXT