Visualizing and Inferring Text Set

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Dog-Marley-John-Grogan/dp/006117114X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223610974&sr=1-1
Grogan, John, and Richard Cowdrey. Bad Dog, Marley! New York: HarperCollins, 2007.

A family gets a new Labrador pup named Marley. This book explores the challenges faced with having a new puppy. Everything Marley does ends up bad and the family considers finding a new home for their puppy. I think this book could be used for a variety of fun classroom activities.

Strategy Connection: One visualizing strategy that this book would be good for is sketch to stretch. Students would be asked to make an illustration based on a connection from their life to the book or a representation of the main idea from the book. I think elementary students really enjoy talking about pets and some of them may have their own puppy. This story is really cute and the students would have fun making a sketch to stretch.



http://www.amazon.com/Eight-Animals-Bake-Cake-Ocho/dp/0399234683/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223610639&sr=1-1

Elya, Susan Middleton, and Lee Chapman. Eight Animals Bake a Cake. New York: Putnam Juvenile, 2002.

This book is about eight (ocho) animals working together to bake a cake. Each animal contributes with a different ingredient to add to the batter. It is about cooking, eating, and the love of good friends. Students have lots of things to look at and think about because the pictures are pretty complex. This would be a great book to use when working on visualizing strategies.

Strategy Connection: The students could read the book by looking at the pictures and make predictions. This is sometimes called a picture walk. This strategy helps students use illustrations to help make sense of unknown words. Also, it is fun for the students to make predictions and compare with their classmates. After reading, the students can compare their predictions to what really happened in the story.


http://www.amazon.com/Little-Forgets-Melanie-Kroupa-Books/dp/0374346135/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223610536&sr=8-1

Cruise, Robin, and Stacey Dressen-McQueen. Little Mama Forgets. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (BYR), 2006.

Lucy’s Mexican- American grandmother forgets many things, but she still remembers the things that are important to the two of them. There is a Spanish glossary of the words included at the end of the story. This would be a good text to use for creating mental images using all senses.

Strategy Connection: Students should think about all senses when they read. Thinking about senses can make the reader get more into the text and connect with the story. Students could be asked what they see, hear, feel, smell, and taste when reading this story. I would predict many students would think about memories with their families and would come up with sensory ideas from these memories.