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Description: students will be asked a question by their teacher, then they will be told to think about it in their heads silently. After a minute or so has passed, they will pair up with someone close to them and share their thoughts.

Advantages: gives students time to think about the question, and activates prior knowledge. This also gives students the chance to engage in social activity and learn new things from their peers.

Disadvantages: None. Unless the student does not like to socialize.

ELL: great strategy to use and get them talking and thinking.

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Description: by using prior knowledge and background experiences, students will create a personal picture with the writers text in their minds to visualize what they imagine.

Advantages: creates mental images while reading can improve comprehension, makes sure that the reader is actively engaged in the text.

Disadvantages: None. I think this is an easy strategy that almost anyone can do if they are reading and comprehending the text.

ELL: if they don’t understand what they are reading, they may not be able to visualize the imagine after reading the text. To help with this, I would read with them, slowly, and to make sure they understand the text first.

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Generating an image while reading requires that the reader be actively engaged with the text.

Creating mental images while reading can improve comprehension.

How to use visual imagery

Follow these few simple steps to provide practice developing students' mental images:

Begin reading. Pause after a few sentences or paragraphs that contain good descriptive information.

Share the image you've created in your mind, and talk about which words from the book helped you "draw" your picture. Your picture can relate to the setting, the characters, or the actions. By doing this, you are modeling the kind of picture making you want your child to do.

Talk about how these pictures help you understand what's happening in the story.

Continue reading. Pause again and share the new image you created. Then ask your child to share what he sees, hears, tastes, smells and feels. Ask what words helped him create the mental image and emotions. By doing this, you are providing your child with practice with this new skill.

Are your images identical? Probably not! This is a great time to talk about why your images might be different. Perhaps your child went on a school field trip or had a school assembly that changed the way they created the picture in their mind. Perhaps experiences you've had as an adult influenced what you "drew." These differences are important to understand and respect.

Read a longer portion of text and continue the sharing process.

Once this is a familiar skill, encourage your child to use mental imagery when she is reading by herself. You can feel confident that these mental pictures will help your child understand the story in an important way.

Resources

Into the Book: lesson plans that help students learn to visualize:

Article from Reading Rockets:

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Visual Imagery | Classroom Strategy | Reading Rockets

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Generating an image while reading requires that the reader be actively engaged with the text. Creating mental images while reading can improve comprehension. Follow these few simple steps to provide practice developing students' mental images: Begin reading. Pause after a few sentences or paragraphs that contain good descriptive information.

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Description: is a cooperative learning strategy that helps students with their reading comprehension. There are “home groups” with a certain topic. Students will go to different groups and learn about different things, then they will go back to their home group and share what they learned.

Advantages: helps build comprehension, encourages cooperative learning among students, helps improve listening and social skills.

Disadvantages: may get confusing for some students and the teacher if not managed well.

ELL: this is great for an ELL student because he/she will be engaging in social activities to learn from other students as well.

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Description: before reading, students listen to a short lecture given by the teacher. Then the students read a text over that topic. After reading, there is a large group discussing where students discuss and engage in a classroom discussion over what they read.

Advantages: helps students comprehend material presented orally, builds students prior knowledge before they read a text, engages struggling readers in classroom discussions, and is a flexible strategy that can be used in all curriculum.

Disadvantages: some students do not comprehend or learn from reading on their own. Some students may not like big group discussions either.

ELL: I think this is a great strategy for the ELL student because it offers both listening, reading, and discussing. For help, I would work with these students individually or together for help with comprehending the text.

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The listen-read-discuss strategy helps students comprehend text. Before reading, students listen to a short lecture delivered by the teacher. The students then read a text selection about the topic. After reading, there is a large group discussion or students engage in small group discussions about the topic. During the discussion, students compare and contrast the information from the lecture with the information they read.

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Listen-Read-Discuss (LRD) | Classroom Strategy | Reading Rockets

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The listen-read-discuss strategy helps students comprehend text. Before reading, students listen to a short lecture delivered by the teacher. The students then read a text selection about the topic. After reading, there is a large group discussion or students engage in small group discussions about the topic.

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Description: a word wall is wall filled with words that students need to learn, work on, and spell. New words should be added to the wall frequently. This should be in an area where students can read easily.

Advantages: promotes literacy in the classroom, powerful took to help students work on their spelling, vocabulary, and even reading skills, decorative and fun to incorporate into the classroom.

Disadvantages: None. I think that word walls should be in every classroom to promote literacy.

ELL: I would go over each word outloud every day and week to help promote literacy and understand of the word. Sending home a paper with the word wall list might help too, so that the students can study the m.

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Description: this strategy allows students to take turns reading, pausing, and summarizing the main points of each paragraph. Ask each student to read aloud for five minutes without rereading a word. After each paragraph, students should stop to summarize the main points of the reading.

Advantage: this stratgey helps students develop their reading comprehension skills. It allows each student to take turns reading, pausing, and summarizing the main points of each paragraph. This is a great strategy for getting the main idea of a text.

Disadvantages: some students may not feel comfortable working in pairs or reading outloud to others. You would also have to make sure to match up the pairs with readers of the same level.

ELL: this is a great activity for ELL’s to take part in. This helps with their reading, fluency and understanding.

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Chunking helps students approach challenging texts by breaking down content into manageable pieces.

English & Language Arts

History

Social Studies

Most teachers are willing to tackle the difficult topics, but we need the tools.

- Gabriela Calderon-Espinal, Bay Shore, NY

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Chunking helps students approach challenging texts by breaking down content into manageable pieces.

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Description: a writing strategy that helps students understand their roles as writers. It helps them write creatively and for an audience.

R: Role of the writer. Who or what are you as the writer?
A: Audience. Who are you writing to or for?
F: Format. In what format are you writing? A letter, poem, speech, etc.
T: Topic. What are you writing about? Subject? Point of story?

Advantages: includes writing from different view points, students learn important writing skills such as audience, main idea, and organization. Teaches students to think creativiely.

Disadvantages: Some students may not want to use this and already have their own strategies and ways of writing. They may not remember what RAFT stands for.

ELL: I would have a hand out paper of what RAFT stands for and go through the steps with them and explain thoroughly the steps of writing.

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RAFT | Classroom Strategy | Reading Rockets

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RAFT is a writing strategy that helps students understand their roles as writers, the audience they will address, the varied formats for writing, and the topic they'll be writing about. By using this strategy, teachers encourage students to write creatively, to consider a topic from a different perspective, and to gain practice writing for different audiences.

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Description: students hunt for other words that follow the same spelling features studied during their word or picture sort. This can be a fun searching activity throughout the classroom to get the students moving.

Advantage: it helps to enhance students’ vocabulary growth, teaches students to focus on spelling patterns and root words, it helps students learn how words are used in different contexts, and it is a fun engaging activity to do instead of writing vocabulary words from s textbook.

Disadvantages: some students may struggle with finding the words.

ELL: may be hard to point out words, working with a partner will help them be able to find words together.

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Simon loves to look for things; it's fun for him. I like to capitalize on fun, so I created a few word hunts to help him learn some sight words (and to aid in practicing tally marks).

Here's what I did for this activity:

1. I wrote all the words on sticky notes and stuck them all over the living and dining rooms.
2. I attached a word hunt page (see printables below) to a clip-board. We read through the words together. We read through the words again.
3. Simon hunted through the rooms for the words.
4. He made tally marks on the page as he found each word.
5. We looked at the tally marks and determined which word he found the most, which word he found the least, and we read all the words again.
6. When we were finished, I stuck all the post-it notes together (so we can use them again soon).

You can download the word hunt pages by clicking on the image below.

If you are looking for other games and printables for your child who is learning to read, try my On the Road to Reading Pinterest board.

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We're Going on a Word Hunt - Walking by the Way

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Simon loves to look for things; it's fun for him. I like to capitalize on fun, so I created a few word hunts to help him learn some sight words (and to aid in practicing tally marks). Here's what I did for this activity: 1.

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Description: visual organizer that helps enrich the students understanding of a new topic. This is done during the reading or lesson.

Advantages: helps children organize new information, helps students make meaningful connections between main idea or other information, easy to construct and they are fun to make.

Disadvantages: none. I think this is s great visual representation of a text. It is very beneficial.

ELL: I think this would be very helpful for ELL students. Words can be explained thoroughly beforehand and written up on the board for them to see and help spell.

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Description: a comprehension strategy used before reading to activate students prior knowledge and also builds curiosity of a new topic. Students will listen to or read a few statements that they either agree with or do not agree with.

Advantages: teach students to make predictions, gets them excited for the new topic, sets a purpose for reading, and activates prior knowledge.

Disadvantages: some students may not be able to read well, or think that these are boring.

ELL: I would read the statements to them or have them work in partners.

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Anticipation Guide | Classroom Strategy | Reading Rockets

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An anticipation guide is a comprehension strategy that is used before reading to activate students’ prior knowledge and build curiosity about a new topic. Before reading, students listen to or read several statements about key concepts presented in the text; they’re often structured as a series of s…