Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Like I remembers
felt, good, that’s done, now I can write the book. It was like this was purpose
something I had to do to do something else. The other book the point was
visualized
meaning by reading. Here the point was researching and learning and then writing.
using visual I like writing, but here it was the topic that bugged me. I liked making
cues
the book though, that was cool. Especially the pictures and the pictures
in the books I read really helped with that, to get the pictures right.
In fact, my students, like all adolescents, enjoy perusing these artifacts of their
thinking, or more to the point, love this kind of self-analysis! (One student informed
me “To know me is to love me!” I asked him why he was so sure. His reply: “I know
myself really well and I really love myself.”)
3. Connect Personally
Show how you use your own experience to help make meaning, and the ways you bring
your experiences of other texts to help you understand this one. I call this “relating life
to literature” or “bringing life to text.” Beth Davey calls this process the “like a ___”
step, when readers say to themselves, This is like when Joey and I went fishing or This is
just like that movie I saw.
I also ask students to practice the reverse operation, considering how they might
apply what they are reading to their life. I call this “relating literature to life” or “text-to-
life connections.”
PROMPTS
“This is like_____” “This reminds me of ______ .” “This could help me with ____ .”
“This is helping me with/to think about/to make plans for _____.”
4. Visualize
Show how you take the sensory and physical details the author gives you and expand them
in your mind’s eye to create an image or a scene. As I’ve said, this ability to “see” what one is
reading, to create accurate mental models and/or sensory-rich story worlds as one reads is
crucial to engaged reading. Demonstrate how you develop and adapt images as you read,
whether it’s an expression on a character’s face, the interaction of resistors and charges in an
electrical circuit, the workings of an engine, the room the characters are in, and so on.
PROMPTS
“In my mind’s eye,” “I imagine,” “I see _____ .” or “I have a picture of _____ .”
Examples
“In my mind’s eye I see a girl entering a dark room.”
“I see a scientist working at his desk.”
“I imagine a floor plan of the house, and I can see how it is organized with the kitchen
in the back with a bay window.”
“In my head I can see an electrical circuit plan and I see where these lightbulbs would
go in that circuit and how the battery pushes the charges.”
5. Monitor Comprehension
Demonstrate how expert readers constantly (though subconsciously) monitor compre-
hension by asking, “Does this make sense?” Show that you expect what you read to
make sense to you and that if it doesn’t you will stop to identify this as a problem.
PROMPTS
“This is (not) making sense because ____.” “This is (not) what I expected because ____.”
“This connects (or doesn’t) to what I already read/already know because _____.”