Kelsey Townsend

Teaching Reading

09/15/15

Target Literacy Strategy or Skill: Visualizing and Inferring

Grade level: 1st
Objective: The student will be able to visualize to fill in missing information when reading picture books.
Common Core State Standard/PASS: CCSS RL. 1.7 Use illustrations and details in a story to describe
its characters, setting, or events.
Prior knowledge: (What students already know) Students know how to read picture books.

Observations/Rationale: (Before Lesson) What did you notice in your students work that let you
know this lesson was necessary? I noticed that students were having a hard time filling in the blanks that
the picture books left out. They were having a hard time visualizing what was happening between the
illustrations that were given.

Materials Needed:
Lesson From (Name your source including page number): Strategies that Work: Teaching
Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis p. 133-134.
Mentor Text: Good Dog Carl by Alexandra Day
Materials: Book (Good Dog Carl by Alexandra Day) and paper for a response.
Student Groups (whole/small group/partners): The lesson will begin in groups while we read the mentor
text. Later, students will individually work on a response. Then we will come together as a group and
share what we have done.
Mini Lesson Format:

Connect (Engagement): Often when students are reading picture books, especially wordless
picture books, we dont know how to visualize what is happening between the illustrations we are
given. This is something that we as the reader need to infer. Infer means to decide what something
is based on what we know or are given. In this book, Good Dog Carl by Alexandra Day, we are
given a lot of pictures. However, we are not given all the information. We must infer what is
happening between the illustrations we are given.

Teach (Model/Explain) Now, we are going to look through this book together as a class and find
places where we need to infer what is happening between the illustrations we are given. On page
4, we see the baby on Carls back. It looks like they are about to go into a room. In the next
illustration, Carl and the baby are shown on a bed. From the information we are given, we have to
both infer and visualize what information we are not given. After looking at these pictures, I would
infer that Carl and the baby are going into the mother and fathers room. I can visualize Carl
opening the door, running through the room and jumping on the bed. This causes the baby to fall
off his back and land on the bed. Does everyone understand how we are visualizing and
inferring? Give time for answers and questions.

Active Engagement (student(s) try it out): Okay, now we are going to work individually and
draw what we visualize as well as write what we infer from the information we are given on pages
8 and 9. The first illustrations shows the baby sitting at the top of a laundry chute with Carl
looking down at him. The next illustration shows Carl dashing or running down the stairs. Think
about what you think happened between these two illustrations and draw what you visualize.
When you are finished, we will share our thoughts with the class.

Link/Closure (Articulating the expectation that students will now use this skill/strategy when
reading or writing): When we read our picture books, there will often be places where we need to
visualize and infer from the information we are given. We must take what we are given and fill in
the blanks. When you are reading in the future, I want you to use your schema or background
knowledge to help you visualize what you think may be happening in the blanks of visual
information. If you want, you may draw your visualizations and put them in your notebook.