"When readers create mental images, they engage in text in ways that make it personal and memorable to them alone. Anchored in prior knowledge, images come from emotions and all five senses, enhancing understanding and immersing the reader in rich detail."
Decked out in red and white striped cat in the hat hats, Dr. Seuss pencils, new bookmarks, and stickers galore, each student worked hard and had a lot of fun wishing Dr. Seuss a happy birthday today. We've been counting the amount of Dr. Seuss books we've read (5 so far) and doing lots of different reading response activities.
While listening to each book, the kids are practicing a new reading comprehension strategy - visualizing. While listening to the text with only their sense of hearing, each student is being asked to "make a movie" in their head. This helps beginning readers make sense of what is being read and bring more personal meaning to the text.
After reading The Cat in the Hat, we imagined what we would do if the Cat in the Hat appeared in different areas of the school. While some would get scared and put a call into Mr. Bradley, others thought they would invite him in to play or read his story.
We also read, Oh, The Places You'll Go, and drew ourselves in a hot air balloon and imagined where we would fly to if we could go anywhere. Check out their work in the hallway to see where your child would want to go.
After reading Hop on Pop, we reviewed some rhyming strategies and also filled Cat in the Hat's Hat with all the sight words we know.
For math, we read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and we practiced making number sentences using different amounts of fish. We drew a picture of our number sentence and used water colors to dazzle it up.
I've now lost my camera battery charger, so I apologize for the lack of real pictures!
