Comprehension - Part #2. Visualising.

It's time for part 2 of my comprehension series!

Visualising

This is the easiest strategy to work on, so it's the best one to start with.

Introduce the strategy using a poster/PowerPoint/movie e.t.c. Find a text that has a description of a character, object or place. Texts that are good for this are; The Twits by Rhald Dahl, The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson, The Gruffalo's Child by Julia Donaldson and Inside Mary Elizabeth's House by Pamela Allen.

Read with an emphasis on key features that you want the children to pick up on (i.e change your tone of voice). This will signal to students that they should pay attention to this feature for their visualisation. Of course, once students are more familiar with this strategy you will not need to alter your tone.

Depending on what age group you have, you can get students to label their drawing using words and phrases from the text that they used to create their visualisation. These labels can then be used to write sentences. Don't you just love it when everything links together? At the end, show students the picture in the book and have them make comparisons between their drawing, the book and their classmates' drawings.

Music is the perfect text for visualising scenery/setting. YouTube has lots of great clips for rainforest, oceans, cities and whatever else you want. Start off by playing the music, have students close their eyes and visualise the place. After the piece has finished, brainstorm a list of this that they heard and talk about what kind of place it would be. Students can either draw or create a mixed media artwork to represent their visualisation.

Another fun visualising activity is to read sections of a text and have students draw what is happening. You could even extend the activity and have each student visualise a different section, then put all the pictures together at the end to create a comic strip of the text.

Create a wall that teaches in your classroom by hanging up student work samples under posters/anchor charts. The students will love it, it will make your room look bright and colourful and it provides a visual reminder for student learning! 

If you are looking to do the Super Six in your classroom, I have a range of posters in my store. Click here to check out the Comprehension category.

I'm pretty proud of these posters. The backgrounds and borders were made by myself :D

Next strategy; Predicting!

Casual Teaching on Year 1: Visualising, Mass, Rhyming and Craft!

Today was my first day teaching in 13 months!

I was excited to come back. As much as I loved travelling, I still missed being in the classroom.

I was given a Year 1 class, which I was happy about. I prefer teaching K-3 and feel more comfortable with that grade range as that's where I've had the most experience.

Seeing everyone again was nice. Lots of hugs and 'Welcome Back' moments :)

So what did we do today?

After the morning routine was taken care of, we did a lesson on one of the Super Six Comprehension Strategies; Visualising.

I started if off with a revision of the concept and read a passage from The Gruffalo's Child.

The passage described the Big Bad Mouse character. Students then drew and coloured their visualisations. Students were encouraged to label their drawing e.g. "long, strong tail" and "fiery eyes".

Students then shared their drawings with the class and I showed them what the mouse looked like in the story. If you're not familiar with the text, the Big Bad Mouse looks like a normal mouse. This was a great discussion point - Why was the mouse described as being big and scary when he was just a regular mouse?

At that point we had to pack up and go to the library, so I left them with that question and we would go back to it later.

Library was fun, I got to read a story to the two classes.

I had duty first half of lunch. They added a new duty area and I had no idea where it was. Awkward! I had a whole heap of students follow me around asking me where I had been and if it was really me, haha. I never thought that so many students would have noticed I wasn't around.

After lunch, I read The Gruffalo's Child. The students picked up that the Gruffalo couldn't remember exactly what the mouse looked like so he made it up.

We then moved onto maths. I brought in my own equal arm balance. A great purchase for only $5 a few years ago. We talked about what it is used for and how to read it. Then we had some fun by estimating how many 10's rods would be needed to equalise the balance with various classroom objects. Very important to make sure the students were counting each rod as they placed it in rather than just counting randomly.

There was only about half an hour till recess so we had a mini lesson on rhyming words. After discussing what rhyming words are, I read There's a Wocket in my Pocket by Dr. Seuss.

Dr. Seuss books are great for rhyming words. The students loved the story as well as picking out the rhyming words on each page.

After the story, we played a game. I picked a base word and then called out words that rhymed with the word. As long as the words rhymed with my base word, the students could move around the room. When I called out a word that did not rhyme, students had to freeze. Great way to get the wiggles out!

After recess, we did a craft activity. Students could make either a lion or a butterfly.

It was a great first day back and the day just flew by. Looking forward to more days :) I would love to post photos of the work, but to keep it simple and avoid any sort of legal drama, I'm refraining from posting. It's just not worth the potential trouble.