Does Anyone Have Any Suggestions On Good Read Alouds For A Visualization Lesson, Teaching 1st Grade?
I am looking for a good book to use as a read aloud for 1st grade. I will be teaching the children how to visualize and incorporating retelling of the story. Any suggestions would be helpful.
I have enjoyed using “Why Mosquitoes buzz in people’s ears.” The children really enjoyed retelling this story especially if you include an activity with it by making paper plate animals from the book and doing a reader’s theater. Also “Trucks” by Donald Crews is an excellent wordless picture book. I had the students just sit and look at the pictures the first time I went through the book and the second time I had them describe what was happening on each page and they connected the information from one page to the next. After that I had the whole class come up with the words for the story and they drew pictures for each sentence. They had a blast doing that. I hope this helps. Good Luck!
You don’t need to. Children have their own imaginations, and are quite capable of using them.
folk and fairy tales are good literature to start students with visualization and retelling of the story
the students may have previous experience with the story so they can concentrate on the new comprehension skill…work the new skill with a familiar story then work it again with an unfamiliar story
I have had great success with “Trouble on the Tracks” by Kathy Mallat. This book is misleading–it leads the reader to think that there is a real train, but the surprise ending shows that it’s only a toy train. I’ve used it with older students and read it aloud, not showing them the pictures, and it led to good conversations about how our visualizations change as we read.
But this might be a little hard for a first lesson. Perhaps “Owl Babies” would be better…it’s pretty simple and concrete, and has some nice specific details (“they lived in a hole in the trunk of a tree with their mother. It was their home”)
I also have made up short monster descriptions and read them aloud, then had my students try to draw what I am describing. Then we share our pictures and talk about the details that we drew.
Good luck! Visualizing is definitely a worthwhile reading strategy and first grade is a time to start. (Of course students have their own imaginations…visualization lessons provide students opportunities to use them!)