Reading comprehension is something that students can find really difficult. Reading strategies are taught in order to give students the tools to improve their comprehension of texts. Visualization is one of these skills and is super important for students as it’s how they create mental images of what they are reading.
We’ve found 20 of the best activities for teaching the visualization reading strategy to your students and getting them on their way to improving their comprehension. Check them out below!
1. Shared Visualizing Activity
A great way to introduce visualizing to your students is with this shared activity. Select some students as your visualizers and have them take turns drawing what they visualize as your read a story to your class. Your class can then try to guess the title of the book based on the pictures drawn.
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2. Learn About Visualizing
This video is a great way to explain visualization to your students and depicts why it’s an important skill to improve reading comprehension. This is a great way to start your visualization lessons with older students.
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3. Visualizing Activity Pack
This activity pack offers a wide range of visualization activities. It’s jam-packed with task cards, support sheets, varied worksheets, and prompts for students.
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4. The Girl Who Thought in Pictures Activity
This activity, based on The Girl Who Thought in Pictures, is a great way to teach students how to create a mental image of the words they are reading. Students are given words and are then asked to draw the mental image they have when they think about the words.
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5. Anchor Chart
An anchor chart is a fantastic method for teaching visualization to your students. Display a book and a quote from the book, and then give your students post-it notes to draw the image they visualize when reading the quote. They can then attach it to the chart.
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6. Read, Visualize, Draw
This super visualization activity gives children a piece of text to read. They can then highlight the parts of the text they will use to draw a visualization in the space above.
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7. Visualizing with Senses
This activity focuses on considering the senses when visualizing. Using the senses is a fantastic way to help children to create a mental image of what they are reading. This simple chart is great to use with the whole class or for students to use individually.
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8. Before, During, After
This is a great idea for introducing or building visualizing skills. Start with just the title of the book and get students to draw the mental picture they have from the title. Then, read a bit of the book and let them visualize as you read; drawing their “during” image. Lastly, finish the book and let them draw the “after” image.
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9. My Neighbor’s Dog Is Purple
My Neighbor’s Dog is Purple is a great story to use for a visualizing lesson. Display the story but cover the ending. Gets students to draw what they have visualized as the image of the dog and then reveal the ending. Once the students know the end of the story, get them to draw a second picture of what the dog actually looks like!
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10. Visualize a Volcano
This fun anchor chart activity, which uses the senses, is a great way to get students to start thinking in a way that gets them visualizing and creating mental images. Start with a picture of a volcano and get students to add what they visualize as bits of lava flying out.
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11. Guess Who
Guess Who is a fantastic game to improve students’ visualization skills and vocabulary. Each player has a character and must guess the other’s character by asking questions about their appearance. Students will need to visualize the traits they have correctly guessed to match them to the person in front of them.
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12. Multi-sensory Visualizing Game
This fun game called concentration is a super way to strengthen your students’ visualizing skills. After picking a category, students will pass a ball around to name different things in that category. This is a great option for circle time.
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13. Read and Draw
This simple, free printable template is a great way to get students casually recording the mental images they create whilst they read. You could have these in your class library for students to take when they borrow a book!
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14. Visualizing Guessing Game
Games are a superb method for teaching visualization. This game is a great way to demonstrate to students how they can use keywords from a text to help them create their visualizations by underlining the relevant words, before guessing the object being described.
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15. Group Visualization
Whilst you read a story to your class, students can pass around a piece of paper and create a drawing; either around the classroom or within smaller groups. Each person can add something to the visualization as you read.
16. Visualizing Task Cards
These free visualizing task cards provide wonderful fast-finisher tasks for students. They will help your students develop their visualizing skills with fun prompts.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
17. Read Aloud and Draw
This activity is an easy way to incorporate a few minutes of visualization into your classroom routine every day. As you read a story, students can draw what they are visualizing as they hear the story. In the end, students can share their drawings with each other.
18. Create a Visualizing Strategy Poster
Creating a poster about visualization is a super way to get students to recall their knowledge about the skill and draw their attention to key points. You could make a poster together or each student could make their own.
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19. Labeled Visualization Drawings
This visualization activity is fantastic if you are developing visualization with older students. After reading, students can draw a picture of what they envisioned when reading and then provide quotes from the text as evidence for what they have drawn.
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20. Headbanz Game
Hedbanz is a super fun game for students to practice their visualization skills. Each player gets a card with an object or animal on it and, without looking, places it on their forehead. They then need to ask questions to figure out what is on their card.
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