A Peach of a Comprehension Skill

Our first comprehension skill this year has been visualization. Good readers use the text and illustrations in a story to make pictures in their mind. This can help them understand what is happening in a story.

I chose James and the Giant Peach by Ronald Dahl for our first read-aloud. Oh, my! If you have never read this book, I recommend it. It is full of imagery. Read it, even if you aren't in first grade. No one will know…….  This is a fabulous book to use to practice visualization. As I read the story, I would occasionally stop and think aloud, "Can't you just see that?" and then I would describe what I saw. I was modeling the skill for them.

My class LOVED it! With 15 boys and 7 girls, there aren't many times during the day when everyone is still and engaged. But this story had them enthralled. I read two chapters a day and every time they would ask, "Mrs. Oakley, why do you always stop at the good part?" Bless them.

From the beginning I told them that we would read the book and when we were done, we would watch the movie. I told them we would compare and contrast the two. Hooray!!!! Today was the day we finished the book and tomorrow we will watch the movie! We, umm, they are soooo excited.

Before we watched the movie, however, I wanted to see what they had visualized. So, today they drew pictures of scenes from the book. Below you will see a few of the masterpieces. (All of them were masterpieces, but I can't post 22 pictures on here.)

In this picture you can see the the part where the peach
 is growing bigger and hanging down from the tree.
Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker are selling tickets
to people who want to see the peach.

You can see the peach on the Empire State Building here.
Notice the smaller buildings to show the size of the
Empire State Building.

This one shows the peach over the ocean. The brown dots with
lines down to the peach are the seagulls caught with the
silk threads as they lift the peach up and fly away with it.
This sweetie told me he made the seagulls brown dots
to show them far off. Genius!

This friend divided his paper and drew four scenes.
The left top is the peach growing bigger. See the green sparkle
 things in the soil? The right top is the peach landing
on the Empire State Building. Lower left is the part where the
Cloud Men attack the peach. Lower right is the peach in
the ocean being attacked by sharks. Wow!

Look at the details on the characters in this one. Love it!

I love the fins in this one showing the peach in the 
ocean being attacked by sharks.

They definitely  "saw" this book. And I did not show them one picture!

Well, that was a short, but sweet, post. If you find yourself reading this, please post a comment and let me know you are out there!

Robin