Discussion 4

Visualizing and inferring are something I use with my kindergarten students on a daily basis. I enjoyed reading this chapter and getting some new strategies to implement with my students. I like how the text explained that visualizing and inferring are written about in one chapter because when we visualizing we are inferring with mental images rather than words. They do not occur in isolation but instead together.

The first strategy I found I would like to use in my classroom is visualizing with wordless picture books. With this strategy you show students the picture book and then choose a page where students have to visualize what happened between the current page and the next. By having students do this a teacher can find where students have misconceptions. The goal is not to have students go too far afield because the purpose of visualizing is to help them better understand the actual text.

Another strategy I would like to try with my students is visualizing from a vivid piece of text. As a kindergarten teacher I would read students a piece of text and then have them draw a picture of what they were visualizing in their minds. I think this is great to use with kindergarten because all of the books we read them have pictures which go along with the story. This will allow students to visualize all on their own and tell the teacher whether the student is understanding the text or not.

Inferring feelings with kindergarteners was yet another of the many strategies I want to try! Here you give students feeling cards taped to the back of their shirt. Students have to go around and find someone to act out their feeling and they have to guess it. Students help by giving clues and then the student with the card on their back must infer what feeling is posted on their back. You could also use this with a variety of other cards, not just feeling cards.

Overall teacher in a classroom with the majority of students being ELL, using visualizing and inferring is essential to help students learn how to comprehend text. This goes right along with background knowledge and offers strategies to strengthen many areas in reading. By trying these strategies I will quickly know which students are lacking in background knowledge and still need more instruction.