In order to enjoy reading, you have to be making dynamic mental imagery. However, making these mental movies automatically is necessary not just for enjoyment, but also critical thinking. Once I read a story with a student about a tropical rat that chews on the bark of a poisonous tree, then drools all over its spiky fur; later, a jaguar tries to eat the rat, but when the poisoned spikes poke the jaguar in the mouth, it gets sick and leaves the rat alone. After the student read the story aloud and then described what he saw, I asked him why he imagined the rat had chewed the poison bark and spit it on his fur. “Because he’s a stupid animal,” the student said. Then I asked him what he pictured happened after the rat drooled on his fur, and the proverbial light bulb went off in his head: he realized the rat had been protecting himself when he’d drooled the poisonous bark on his fur.
One of the main purposes of our Visualizing and Verbalizing Program is to help students recall what they’ve read, since memory of the narrative derives largely from being able to recall the mental imagery you create while you read. Yet the power of that sort of dynamic mental image-building extends further; one of the key steps in the Visualizing and Verbalizing program is to introduce higher-order critical thinking questions after a student finishes recalling her imagery for a story. These questions direct a student to consider causality and consequence based on the imagery she made. In the example above, the student answered my question incorrectly not because he wasn’t picturing, but because he wasn’t connecting his images; he was seeing parts, but not the whole, and accordingly, he jumped to an incorrect conclusion. But through modeling a critical-thinking process, we gradually taught that student (and many others) how to think through his imagination, which allows for thoughtful, dynamic engagement with a text, rather than jumping to conclusions based on preconceived notions.
This post was written by Michael Busk.