Visualization From the Text Presented by Coretta MalletFontenot

Visualization From the Text Presented by: Coretta Mallet-Fontenot, Literacy Coach Phillis Wheatley High School Bruce Goffney, Principal

Purposes of Visualizing (Stephanie Harvey, Anne Goudvis, 2000) • Visualizing strengthens our inferential thinking. • … we create pictures in our minds that belong to us and no one else. • … we create our own movies in our minds. • Visualizing personalizes reading, keeps us engaged, and often prevents us from abandoning a book prematurely.

Kylene Beers: When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do • … seeing the action of the text (visualizing) • Mark Sadowski (Texas A& M) visualizing and verbalizing (Dual Coding Theory)

What does this cake represent?

Sadowski’s Structure Words • • Size Color Number Shape Perspective Mood Where/location When • • Sound Smell Texture/Touch Placement

Using visuals to make predictions • When we see the cake and candles that makes us think about a birthday. You know, that’s what good readers do, they look at things-even like pictures-and use all the information they can to make a prediction. (Kylene Beers, 1993).

Visualization: Sensory Details • Sight – what the reader can see mentally • Hear - what the reader can hear mentally • Smell – what the reader can smell mentally • Touch – what the reader can physically feel mentally • Taste – what the reader can eat mentally

Sensory Detail: Sight • Sight - the reader can draw a mental picture of what the writer has presented • Example: My grandmother, covered in an old, dusty, blue apron, stood at the kitchen counter and rolled bread dough with her favorite rolling pin. • TAKS Tip: Sight words are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives.

Mamma Zadie’s Apron

Writing From the Heart • Mamma Zadie’s Apron excerpt: …Mamma Zadie came running down the back garrey with her tattered old blue apron…. She was going to get us for using her vegetable garden as a mud slide for summer frolicking. When she saw her grandchildren having such a good time she began to let out a high pitched country laugh, “Hee, heeee!”

Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying • Chapter 3, p. 16 - Sight • “MY GRAY ’ 46 FORD was parked in front of the house. Tante Lou, in her black overcoat and black rimless hat, and Miss Emma, in her brown coat with the rabbit fur around the collar and sleeves and her floppy brown felt hat, followed me out to the car and stood back until I had opened the door for them. ”

A Lesson Before Dying: Sight • This statement makes me think about the following….

Kylene Beers: When Kids Can’t Read: What Teachers Can Do • Reluctant readers enjoy informational books with a large number of photographs, illustrations, drawings, charts, and diagrams. …they use the visual aspects of the book not only to help them create meaning but to help them visualize the text, . . • … what they are really doing: using all the text features they can to help this text be more meaningful to them. p. 288

Sensory Detail: Sight • Write five sentences that incorporates the sense of sight.

This owl reminds me of….

Sensory Detail: Hearing • Hearing – the reader can hear actual conversations in their minds • Example: “That night in the woods, it seemed as though every owl was perched on a tree going, “Who, who. ” • TAKS Tip: Hearing details usually occur during some form of communication. Communication isn’t limited to human communication.

Think Radio

Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying • Chapter 23, p. 182 - Hearing • “Tante Lou, that radio has nothing to do with turning Jefferson against God, ” I said. “That radio is there to help him not think about death. He’s locked up in that cage like an animal-and what else can he think about but that last day and that last hour. ” That radio makes it less painful. ”

A Lesson Before Dying: Hearing • What kinds of songs do you think Jefferson was listening to in his jail cell? • Can you hear these in your mind’s eye? • Who in your family listens to these kinds of songs?

Sensory Detail: Hearing • Write five sentences that uses the sense of hearing.

Pumping Gas

Sensory Detail: Smell • Smell – this allows the reader to perceive possible odors • Example: The wreckage created a very gaseous odor just before the vehicles exploded. • TAKS Tip: Olfactory details generally add an element of grossness to the tone of the paper.

Fresh wood reminds me of….

Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying • Chapter 8, pp. 60, 61 - Smell • Then I say the long poles of wood stacked high upon the wagon, … • …the fifth-and sixth-grade boys sawed and chopped the wood. • …I watched the five older boys saw and chop the wood.

Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying • What does the smell of freshly chopped wood smell like to you? • What memories does it conjure up?

Sensory Detail: Smell • Write five sentences using the sense of smell.

Sensory Detail: Touch • Touch – the reader can imagine how the various articles feel • Example: Her hair felt like soft, silky fur. It just glided down his fingers, like water on a duck’s back. • TAKS Tip: The sense of feel can generally be observed with the use of adjectives in a piece of writing.

Facial Expressions

Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying • Chapter 2, p. 14 - Touch • I clamped my jaws so tight the reins in my neck felt as if they would burst.

Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying • Clamp your jaws at this time. What does it feel like physically, emotionally? • What images does this act create in your mind?

Sensory Detail: Touch • Write five sentences that details the sense of touch.

Food

Sensory Detail: Taste • Taste – the reader can imagine the writer enjoys eating a particular item (s) • Example: Recipe: Shrimp Scampi Cook shrimp scampi sauce with white wine, garlic, butter, and prawns. • TAKS Tip: Taste usually involves aromatic foods, ingredients, dishes.

Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying • Chapter 3, p. 18 Taste • …to bring in a chicken I had caught and killed, eggs I had found in the grass, and figs, pears, and pecans I had gathered from the trees in the yard.

Ernest J. Gaines: A Lesson Before Dying • Imagine what these items would taste like if they were fresh from the garden. • What meals or events do they help you to connect with or remember?

Sensory Detail: Taste • Write five sentences that details the sense of taste.

Sensory Detail: The Five Senses • Write five sentences that incorporates all five senses. • Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste, Touch

Reaction to Sensory Details • A writer should always explain how each sensory detail makes them feel, think, act, react.

Available Resources • • Picture books Student journals/writing Newspaper articles Novels Poems Plays Professional Literature

Bibliography • Beers, Kylene. When Kids Can’t Read, What Teachers Can do (2003). Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH. • Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson Before Dying (1993). Vintage Contemporaries: A Division of Random House, Inc. : New York, NY. • Harvey, Stephanie and Anne Goudvis. Strategies That Work (2000). Stenhouse Publishers: Portland, Maine.