Mentor Monday Linky 3/31/14: Visualizing with Poetry and Stories Julian Tells

Can I just say that I love using small snippets of text and picture books to teach different topics, so this linky makes me happy to link up to!  Thanks to Emily at The Reading Tutor for hosting. I hope to get some new books to add to my list of mentor texts!

I think visualizing is a fun reading strategy to teach, and also a fun reading strategy to learn!  When I think about the opportunities for students to express their creativity within this strategy, I want to teach it even more.  They learn the importance of word choice, creating images, and author's choice both by reading and then in their own writing.

Since it is Poetry month (well tomorrow anyway!), I thought I'd start with my good 'ol pal, Shel Silverstein.  I remember as a child checking out Where the Sidewalk Ends over and over again to the point where my librarian asked me to check it out every other time so that other students could read the book.

Anyway, I love starting with Shel Silverstein because it spurs students to rediscover their love of poetry or to at least appreciate some humor in it.  Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout is a great poem for visualizing because you will get so many different images of the poem.  I typically read the poem aloud without showing them the illustration and then give them a copy of the poem without the illustration for them to create their own visualizations.

Here is the visualizing worksheet if you want to use it! 

I especially love the last question and enjoy having the classroom discussion after the lesson.  

 The Stories Julian Tells is a wonderful compilation of short stories.  I really like this text because they are short stories, there are pieces of humor, and also imagination.  Visualizing the scenes from this book are easy and also help them see how it might help them later in the text as they attack the other short stories.

That's it for me for now!  I hope you enjoy visualizing as much as I'm enjoying our beautiful weather today!  Gotta run!