Read and Visualize: A Fun Literacy Activity

With this literacy activity, students will read a decodable text, and then build a scene based on what they visualize. What I love about this is that is it a fun way to engage with a text. In order to comprehend any text, we must interact with the text! It’s more than just using a strategy. To complete this task, students must decode the words accurately and make meaning of those words together as phrases, sentences, and the text as a whole. Rereading the text can also improve fluency.

This activity has evolved over the past decade-plus! It was originally called Read, Visualize, Draw (see below). It was originally a literacy center that I used in my first-grade class, where students would read a short text and draw what they visualized. It has evolved into something different for two reasons:

First, although this activity was beloved by many, it was also dreaded by some. When I had my second son years later, I understood why! He struggles to draw just about anything, so this activity would have been really frustrating for him. He could read and visualize, but he could not complete the task of drawing. This defeats the whole purpose of this activity because the ultimate goal is comprehension, not drawing. For this reason, I started to modify this activity and made an option that wasn’t just about drawing. I made the option to build the scene instead of drawing it.

Second, I was transitioning away from Balanced Literacy and beginning to follow evidence-based practices, which led me to Structured Literacy. This meant that for my younger students, I  wanted the texts to be decodable. So, I went back and rewrote many of the texts to be decodable, using phonics concepts that they would have by certain points in the year.

Although I originally used this as a literacy center, now I actually prefer to use it in a guided setting.  I use it with small groups and while tutoring. With a small group, you give each student their own text but use one scene for the whole group. Students should practice reading it first on their own, then you can choral read it (read it all together at the same time). This way, they get the decoding practice with the first read and fluency practice with the rereading. After that, you can go back, line by line to make meaning of the text and create the scene. In this way, you are practicing decoding, fluency, and comprehension!

Another change I made was adding “scoops” to the text. I have been using scoops to work on fluency and comprehension with my students. These “scoops” show the meaningful phrases in each sentence. Identifying phrases can help with fluency and comprehension. (Read more about fluency strategies here.)

I got so much positive feedback about these updates and requests to sell them separately (from the literacy centers) and also to bundle them together. While doing this, I decided to make more options for differentiation. So now each scene has three text options. These options vary, but for the most part, there is usually one with just CVC words or with closed syllables (if it’s not possible to make a text with just CVC words), one with silent e , closed, and open syllables, and then one with vowels teams and/or r-controlled vowels as well (using all syllable types). The picture below shows an example:

I also wanted to provide other formatting options. There is the full-page (with color) text option with the “scoops”, a half-page (with color) option without the scoops, a “printable” (black-and-white) cut and glue option, and a “printable” (black-and-white) Choose-the-Correct-Scene option. An example is shown below:

Click here for a video showing this activity.

The Original Activity: Read, Visualize, Draw

The original activity was called Read, Visualize, Draw. As I mentioned, with this version students had to draw what they visualized. These are not decodable.

Here are some very old samples from about 11 years ago!