Word pictures
Meena Raghunathan
Have you ever made or heard comments like: ‘I don’t at all like the actor who plays Sherlock Holmes in the new serial. He is too fat/short/old/young’?
What does this mean? Basically, that the speaker has a very strong image of what Sherlock Holmes looks like through all her reading of Sherlock Holmes stories.
This is exactly what visualization is. A popular and useful dictionary definition of visualization is ‘The formation of a mental image of something’.
Research indicates that reading and learning improve if children visualize what they are reading. Not only are they able to understand better, but also relate better to the text. But it is not something all children will do automatically. Sometimes, they need to be encouraged and supported in doing this.
The RIDER strategy is used commonly and is of proven value, including for under-achieving students, in helping in visualization.
This strategy involves taking students through a five-stage process:
Reading: Read the sentence.
Imagining: Make a picture in your mind.
Describing: Describe the image.
Evaluating: Evaluate your image to see if it fits with the text.
Reading On: Read the next part of the story and do it all again.
How can this be used practically?
The first step would be for you to choose a text which easily lends itself to visualization. It should be rich in description and/or action. The actual choice of the text would depend on the level and interest of the students, but it should be more or less comprehensible to them, without too many new words.
Then, you could read out a few sentences slowly and clearly. Follow this up describing to the students what you see in your mind. Now, read the sentences again, or ask a student to read the sentences out loud. Then ask them to close their eyes and imagine the scene. After a minute or so, ask a few of them to describe what they imagined.
Without singling out any student, discuss and help them evaluate whether the images fit the text. Take care not to judge any image as right or wrong – it is after all the child’s version of the text. However, do point out if there are differences between the image and any facts that are present in the text. This may also be the point at which you can tell them the meanings of words which may not be familiar to all of them.
Then move on to the next passage and do this again. Practice with about three or four such passages.
Then, depending on the level of your class, you could ask them to read on by themselves, giving them an appropriate time to complete a page or story. This could be done for 10-15 minutes at a time, beyond which they may lose interest.
Tips for a successful visualization activity:
- You could do this with individual students (or at home with your child!). It can also be done with small groups of children or with the whole class. A large class may however not be a very ideal setting, as not all will get the chance to share their images and may lose interest. It could work well as a strategy recommended by you to parents to do at home, as well as done by you in the classroom with small groups.
- Explain to the children what they are going to experience. Tell them that the purpose is to help them enjoy the story or passage better.
- If reading from illustrated books to younger children, to begin with, you can do a few stories where you read and then show them the picture and ask them to describe it. For subsequent stories, you could read out the story, but not show them the pictures. Ask them to do their own visualizations.
- Extend the exercise to go beyond just visuals. Ask them if they can smell the flowers or grass or garbage described in a scene. Ask them how a curtain or a coat described in the story would feel. Or how the sweet that the child in the story is eating tastes. How the wind sounds. Involve as many senses as possible to help them imagine the whole scene, almost as if they are experiencing it.
- As the children get more used to the technique, other ways to get them to express themselves can be brought in. For instance, they can be asked to draw the scene as they imagine it. If they are all drawing the same item, for instance, if you ask them to draw, ‘what do you think the heroine looked like,’ it would be fun to then put up their drawings of the same scene, and compare their visualizations. Alternatively, groups of children can illustrate different parts of the story, and the pictures can be displayed in sequence.
- With older children, they may be asked to act out the story. Some of the children can make backdrops based on the descriptions of the scenes. Others can discuss and decide on props based on their reading. Yet others can work out the dresses and looks of the principle characters.
Such a process of visualization helps them to develop their reading skills at one level, as they give concrete meaning to the words in their minds. At another level, as they listen to others read and hear them share their visualizations, they also develop their listening skills.
Such exercises can help even children who are not fond of reading, because it moves away from just looking at the printed word. A major advantage may come from the fact that children who are not very good with written exercises may be good at imagining, visualizing and verbalizing. They may be good at drawing or acting. When such multiple abilities come into play, more children become actively engaged.
Visualization also helps to develop empathy and emotionally connect with the characters of a story. You can encourage this by asking questions like: ‘What do you think the girl felt when she saw her puppy hurt itself?’
Visualization exercises can be supported by the audio-visual media. For instance, PowerPoint presentations, films, etc., can be shown after such exercises, and students can discuss how their own visualizations were similar or different.
Choice of readings for visualization is key. With smaller children, one can always start with the standard nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and stories from Panchatantra, etc. For older students, texts can be picked from among the classics and contemporary teen literature. These would of course need to be screened for their potential for visualization.
Visualization has different and huge possibilities at different levels, in different subjects. For instance, history can come alive if you use this technique. Kings, queens, life and times of a bygone era, wars – degrees of elaborateness. Geography too – if you can read out an effective description of a rain forest or cold desert, the students can visualize this, and then also be shown pictures. This would fix it in their minds. Even mathematics – for smaller children, you can ask them to visualize for instance, half or quarter of a dosa or roti, and then show them what it looks like, physically. Getting them to visualize fractions, angles, etc., can help give concreteness to abstract concepts.
Go on. Draw WORD PICTURES for your students. It will be learning and fun combined!
The author has over three decades of experience in education, environmental education and skill training. She has authored textbooks, teachers’ manuals as well as story books for children. She edited the children’s supplement of a national newspaper for several years. She can be reached at meena.raghunathan@gmail.com.
