From reading chapter 9 of Strategies That Work I've realize that visualizing and inferring a book are two mental processes at are connected. "When we visualize, we are in fact inferring, but with mental images rather than words and thoughts" (p.131). Students that are able to infer can understand a book implicitly. Inferring entails an "umbrella" of avenues where students can understand a book. Inferring kind of reminds of being a detective where students use explicit evidence from the book, such as language and context to creating a deeper understanding of what the book is about.
When reading any kind of book making mental movies or visualizing what is happening is what makes reading exciting. The authors make an interesting point on pg. 132 about books turned into movies. I agree with the authors' statement that something is lost from the a book when it's transformed and shorted to fit a average time frame of a movie. However, I think movies are a resource to enhance thinking with students. I believe that students should be reading books rather than trying to just watch the movie to get the essence of a book. However, after reading a book it would be good a to watch the movie of it. I watching the movie about a book could clear up misunderstanding and create discussions of similarities and differences of the book and movie. What are your opinions of showing videos that were made from a novel?
Chapter 9 also gives great lessons on how to encourage students to visualize and infer. I really like the lesson of "Visualizing with Wordless Picture Books" on page 133. I originally thought that using books where the author uses detailed descriptions would be the best what for students to visualize. However, this lessons showed me that even with picture books visualizing with wordless books helps readers build meaning as they go" and offer many opportunities for students to "fill in" pictures between the pages. Is there a wordless picture book that you word recommend to use for a lesson like this?
I think one of the great things about reading is being able to visualize the story in your head. But since everyone is different, everyone is going to have a different take on how they visualize a particular story. I think that is why some people love movie version of books while other people hate them. For example, in Strategies that Work on page 132, they mention the TV show based on the Ramona series by Beverly Clearly. They said that “kids were outraged” by the series because it did not fit their vision of Ramona. But I remember those movies from when I was little and I loved them because I thought they captured Ramona perfectly. I think that this could be a good reason to use movies based on books after reading the book in class. It could create a great discussion between the students about why or why not they liked the movie and if it matched what they had pictured in their minds when they read the book.
ReplyDeleteIn TE 348 I read The Invention of Hugo Cabaret and the story is told mostly though pictures. I loved this book and I have some students now who are reading it and enjoy it too. Although you can see what is going on in the book, you can still fill in the blanks in your mind to create the missing text. I think that using books that tell the story through pictures is a great way to get kids inferring because it allows them all to use their imagination to come up with what they think is happening. It could be fun to do a free write after looking at a few pages of a book told through pictures to have the students write what they think is going on.
I agree with you that "students should be reading books rather than trying to just watch the movie to get the essence of a book." I think that students should never see "the movie" before reading "the book" solely because it puts those visual images in their minds already. Those characters' looks stand in one's mind. When reading a book, a story, for the first time, new images are created, new inferences are made. For example, before the "Harry Potter" movies were made, I had read the first three books. I had my very own image of Hermoine, Ron and Harry, of Hagrid and Dumbledore. But when the movies were made and released, when I hear any of those names, my image of their character relates to the movie's portrayal. I do believe it is good for students to see other's points of view, but with an hour and a half of exposure to a what one person views a character as can have a major impact on the student's individual creativity. Most movies also differ quite a bit from the book. We recently read the book, Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days by Stephen Manes, then followed it up with the movie version. It was good to use both and talk about similarities and differences, but I would not have shown the movie first, and perhaps not at all.
ReplyDeleteI remember the book, Good Dog Carl, in which the authors of Strategies That Work use in their lesson example on page 133. I loved this book as a child, and when my mom would sit down with me and the book, we'd talk through what was happening. Making connections between pictures is a great visualizing activity. Students could be asked to create another page of the book, forcing visualization to happen between the pages.
I think another type of genre that would be good for visualizing and connecting between the pages is graphic novels. Many times between frames events happen. Having students analyze something as short as a three frame or even two frame comic strip or excerpt from a graphic novel could help in connecting images. Students could draw an extra frame, explaining what is happening between the two.
I agree that reading the book before watching the movie is definitely a better idea. In my classroom, we read the book, “Hatchet”. Students had the chance to create drawings on several occasions. They drew drawing on how they envisioned the lake where Brian stayed, drew specific scenes from the book, and drew comic strips depicting some of the events. They created a mental picture of most aspects in the book. Once we finished the book, we watched the movie. Every single student said that it was way different than how they visualized it. There were several differences between the text and the movie but there were also some similarities as well. Our students had the task of writing down these similarities and differences and discuss them with their group. I thought it was a great way to share each other’s mental images so that students could see how everyone visualizes differently.
ReplyDeleteIn our book, “Strategies that Work” (page 137), it talks about a really cool strategy that would’ve been nice for my students to use with “Hatchet”. It talks about creating mental images that go beyond visualizing. I can imagine this strategy really helps students get in tune with the book on a much deeper level. It calls for students to use all of their senses to comprehend text. The example the book gives is when a student said, “I can see turtles trying to get to the water. Thousands.”, “I hear the sound of thumping against there flippers.”, “I can feel all of the sand kicking into my eyes.”, and so on. To me, this strategy is awesome and I think it’s something the kids would really enjoy doing. I think I may use it during my guided lead teaching.
Has anyone ever seen this strategy used in the classroom? Do you plan to?