When working on reading with students it is important to engage them in activities that encourage different ways of learning—visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.
I really enjoy these visual reading strategies: Storyboard, Open Mind, and Literature Portrait because they help students connect to reading material beyond just reading it. In these strategies, students are challenged to create visual representations of the text with pictures and images.
- For the Storyboard, students divide the paper into sections and sort the important events of the story into each section. This taps into visual, spatial, and even mathematical intelligences.
- For the Open Mind strategy, students will be challenged to get into the minds of the characters in the story. They can divide their visual image into halves—one half for before the conflict and one half for after the conflict—or they can choose to represent the character in any manner they choose.
- For the Literature Portrait, students will create pictures that sum up the main events in the story, using as little words as possible.
With each of these strategies, students will be encouraged to read more deeply and even re-read as they tap into their creative intelligences to make an artistic and symbolic representation of the text.