A Quiet Place by Douglas Wood is a wonderful story to help children use the skills of visualizing and inferring. The story follows a young boy that finds the city just too noisy and dreams of ways to escape. The boy imagines many different places he could go to find quiet; the desert, a forest, a pond, and a museum to name a few. The reader becomes an adventurer along with the young boy as he explores different settings in his imagination. In the end, he realizes that you can always go to a quiet place inside your own mind, "the very best quiet place of all."
Images from the book include scenes from the boy's imagination as he tries to find quiet: "You could look in the desert, where Old Man Saguaro reaches for the sky, and far-off thunderheads bloom like sky-flowers over the mesas. And you can be a Pony Express rider galloping through the Old West."
When we talk to students about visualizing we could tell them to create a movie in their mind before, during, or after they read a book. To help students understand how to visualize we could model prompts like, "When I read this, I see... I hear... I feel...I smell...I taste..." Teachers can use a guided imagery activity to help students create mental images. The teacher asks the students to close their eyes as a descriptive passage is read. During the reading, pause to ask students what they see, hear, taste, smell, and feel. After the story, the students can draw what they imagined.
Images from the book include scenes from the boy's imagination as he tries to find quiet: "You could look in the desert, where Old Man Saguaro reaches for the sky, and far-off thunderheads bloom like sky-flowers over the mesas. And you can be a Pony Express rider galloping through the Old West."
When we talk to students about visualizing we could tell them to create a movie in their mind before, during, or after they read a book. To help students understand how to visualize we could model prompts like, "When I read this, I see... I hear... I feel...I smell...I taste..." Teachers can use a guided imagery activity to help students create mental images. The teacher asks the students to close their eyes as a descriptive passage is read. During the reading, pause to ask students what they see, hear, taste, smell, and feel. After the story, the students can draw what they imagined.
To help students use the skill of inferring, teachers can act out small scenes from the story. For instance, in A Quiet Place the boy is trying to escape from the loud racket of a city, "A place to rest your ears from bells ringing and whistles shrieking and grown-ups talking and engines roaring..." The teacher could place her hands over her ears and close her eyes. The students could infer what the teacher is dramatizing. The story could be dramatized after it is read aloud to the class. The students would enjoy creating their own dramatization after the story.
Take a moment, close your eyes, and find your quiet place.
This book sounds like it would be good for visualizing. There are so many places your mind can visualize, and this book sounds like it has you visualizing places that are not what you would normally. The activity you described seems like a great way to involve the students, and they would probably have a good time with it! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDelete~Jennifer Deaver
This book sounds great for teaching students how to visualize! Ya'll listed a few activities that students can do to help them visualize like closing their eyes, drawing pictures, and acting out parts of the book. Great blog!- Katie
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog and visualizing activity! I like the way the book can be used to help students visualize by also allowing them to us all of their senses!!! By the way, it's ALWAYS good to have a secret quiet place! ~ Katrice Gates
ReplyDeleteI loved your activity which uses the "I see..I hear...I feel...I smell..I taste" prompt. The kids will love the fact that they have the opportunity to visualize anything there minds come to. Even giving them the opportunity to act out the book will excite the students, since they are going beyond the normal "think about it" prompt. -Karli
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a fun and interesting book to teach inferring and visualization! The activities listed seem like good ideas to use for teaching these strategies and definitely appropriate for elementary grade levels! -Lauryn Stripling
ReplyDeleteI love your blog about this story! I think it would be a great activity to do with visualizing and inferring. I love the examples you gave from the book; I could definitely see students being able to vision this without even seeing pictures. Your ideas for the senses are great! Good job! -Lindsay Lawson
ReplyDeleteI like this book just from your vivid description! When I read your blog, I actually closed my eyes and thought about your activity idea. What a great way to teach students about visualizing using their five senses! Thank you for sharing. ~Elma Daniel
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