Visualising and Verbalising



Visualising and Verbalising

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Classroom Materials

Prepared by Catriona Pine

Speech Language Pathologist

Acknowledgements: Tracey Walker, Directorate of School Education, Victoria

Katherine Osbourne, Visualising and Verbalising Workshop, 1999

Reference: Bell, Nanci, ‘Visualising and Verbalising for Language Comprehension and Thinking’, Academy of Reading Publications CA 1986

Visualizing and Verbalizing:

A Practical Introduction

Overview

(1) What is Visualizing and Verbalizing

(2) Setting the Climate

(3) Word Level Imagery

(4) Sentence Level Imagery

(5) Sentence by Sentence Imagery

(6) Paragraph Level Imagery and beyond

(7) Using the Visualizing and Verbalizing program in small groups and in the classroom.

(8) Discussion – Resources

- Other ideas

1) What is Visualizing and Verbalizing (V & V)

“If I can’t picture it,

I can’t understand it.”

Albert Einstein

• V & V is a program that assists - reading and oral comprehension

- expressive language skills

- descriptive skills

- narrative and written expression

- critical thinking

• The program is a conscious step by step program that helps students to process information in order to understand.

• Most successful with students from Year 4 onwards. Best results are those obtained from accurate readers with low reading comprehension skills.

• Developed by Nanci Bell (special education teacher)

Theory that lead to the development of V & V:

Based on the principle of the gestalt - a complex organised unit or whole that is more than the sum of its parts.

A language comprehension disorder is a weakness in the ability to create a imaged gestalt (whole) and interferes with the connection to and interpretation of incoming language.

Therefore, instead of creating a whole image, bits and pieces are processed and the “main idea” is lost.

Getting the gestalt is vital for determining the main idea, predicting, drawing conclusions, making inferences, working out sequences of events, summarising, evaluating and understanding humour.

Researchers in reading and imagery have produced direct evidence linking reading and mental imagery as well as studied the relationship of imagery to prior knowledge and thinking processes.

General symptoms of Gestalt Imagery weakness:

• Weak reading comprehension

• Weak oral language comprehension

• Weak oral language expression

• Weak written language expression

• Weak sense of humour

• Weakness in following directions

• Difficulty with cause and effect

These students are able to hear the answer but unable to process and connect to prior knowledge and will ask the question again only phrased differently. They are often not aware that they are asking the same question over and over. They may miss concepts or nuances and are unable to interpret or sequence the story well. If they are unable to connect to the gestalt of language they will get ‘lost’ and drift away. They may also have difficulties with language humour.

Gestalt helps students with organisation of language and be more relevant, descriptive and fluent.

Visualizing and Verbalizing is a successful program that is fun to learn and easy to demonstrate.

(2) Setting the Climate

Present this information to the students in your small group or class.

I’m going to explain what we are going to do and why we are going to do it.

From the test results, I can see that you find it difficult to understand bat you

read.

Do you find you have to read and reread to understand?

Let me show you how we can stop the words going in one ear and out the other.

We are going to make pictures like this.

Let’s start I have a picture of a cat in my head.

How could I get you to picture the cat?

Right, I’ll tell you.

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After I’ve done that, how do I know that you have the same picture in your head? Right, you’ll use your words to tell me.

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Then I can tell if we have the same picture

So now let me show you why we are going to make pictures.

First we need to look at the brain to understand how talking and picturing can help you. Let’s have a look at the brain from the top down. We have two parts, a right and a left side.

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Scientists think that the two parts do different things. When we imagine things or visualise, they think the right side of the brain works like this. It gets active.

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They think that when we talk, the left side of the brain works like this

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Some people only have one side of their brain working. We really need both sides working together so we can understand and remember better. We need to send information we read or hear from the left side to the right side.

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You know how sometimes we listen to something the teacher says or reads and we can’t remember it well. Has that ever happened to you? This is what happens, the words go in one ear and out the other!

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But if you make a picture of t he words in you brain, an image, then the words will stay in your head like pictures. This will help you remember what you read of hear. So you will picture, or visualise, and then you will talk about or verbalise those pictures in your head.

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Let’s start with the talking or verbalising part first because it is the easiest.

(3) Word Level Imagery

Picture to Picture work

• this gives students practice verbalising from a given picture prior to verbalising from images (example pictures Appendix A)

• Students describe a simple picture you cannot see. You question to stimulate and refine the student’s verbalisation and introduce structure words (see Appendix B) as a guide for basic elements to be included in the description.

• Question the students eg “what should I see for the ….?”, give a choice “Is it _____ or ______?”

• Once the verbalisation is completed, you summarise and use the phrase “Your words made me picture….”

• As you describe the picture the student may modify it by altering or adding more information

When the description is completed, you look at the picture and discuss how it matched your image. If there is a discrepancy, accept responsibility by saying, “you know what, I didn’t picture the ….”

An example:

Ask the class to visualise a cat. As each student gives a description, place a structure word in front ot the class. Say, “Good. You told me about the cat’s…..Your words made me picture…..

What should I picture for…..?”

Use choice and contrast questioning.

Encourage students to close their eyes.

Use gross structure words – what, size, shape, colour, number, where.

Picture to Picture Example

Ask for a volunteer to describe a picture to the rest of the class, guided by the structure words.

Use a simple picture with colour, eg LDA, colouring in pictures, photos

Ask lots of choice and contrast questions eg Is it …. Or ….?

Check through the structure words after the student’s description. Say “Let’s look at the structure words to help us know whether we/ve used enough words to describe the picture. First you told me…. Then you told me….” Etc

Reveal the picture.

Say “I didn’t picture…” rather than “you didn’t tell me about….”

Do another picture but let the student check himself whether he has given all 12 aspects in his description.

Choosing a picture

• One central figure

• Very little detail

• None or very little background

• Colour

Structure Words

• assist in describing concepts

• give the student an opportunity to sequentially re-verbalise

Gross structure words

1. what

2. size

3. colour

4. number

5. shape

6. where

Fine structure words

7. movement

8. mood

9. background

10. perspective

11. when

12. sound

Example pictures for ‘picture to picture’ describing. Collect other interesting pictures with clear objects and actions to describe for your V&V kit, for example, from magazines, books, photos.

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Personal/Known Noun Imaging

• begin with a familiar word eg a pet or something in the student’s own home or environment

• work through the structure words. Remember to summarise with “your words make me picture…”

• use choice and contrast questioning

• encourage students to close their eyes to picture and gesture when describing

• don’t look directly at the student while he is trying to visualise

• model big gestures

Some ideas for nouns:

Tiger

Clown

Horse

Christmas tree

Snake

Aeroplane

Dog

Doll

Cat

Butterfly

Elephant

Fire engine

Bear

Umbrella

Glasses

Flower

Shoe

Also try fantasy imaging to develop detailed imagery.

Ask for students to summarise the group’s images using structure words as a guide. Have everyone contribute.

Summarise using the phrase “Your words made me picture…..”

Structure Words for Visualising and Verbalising

Gross Structure words

WHAT

SIZE

COLOUR

NUMBER

SHAPE

WHERE

Fine Structure Words

MOVEMENT

MOOD

BACKGROUND

PERSPECTIVE

WHEN

SOUND

Help me make a picture in my head….

|What |Movement |

|Size |Mood |

|Colour |Background |

|Number |Perspective |

|Shape |When |

|Where |Sound |

Structure words from Visualising and Verbalising

Help me make a picture in my head….

|What |Movement |

|Size |Mood |

|Colour |Background |

|Number |Perspective |

|Shape |When |

|Where |Sound |

Structure words from Visualising and Verbalising

Help me make a picture in my head….

|What |Movement |

|Size |Mood |

|Colour |Background |

|Number |Perspective |

|Shape |When |

|Where |Sound |

Structure words from Visualising and Verbalising

Help me make a picture in my head….

|What |Movement |

|Size |Mood |

|Colour |Background |

|Number |Perspective |

|Shape |When |

|Where |Sound |

Structure words from Visualising and Verbalising

Help me make a picture in my head….

|What |Movement |

|Size |Mood |

|Colour |Background |

|Number |Perspective |

|Shape |When |

|Where |Sound |

Structure words from Visualising and Verbalising

Help me make a picture in my head….

|What |Movement |

|Size |Mood |

|Colour |Background |

|Number |Perspective |

|Shape |When |

|Where |Sound |

Structure words from Visualising and Verbalising

Individual structure word cards to students to use, eg in the classroom.

Key Visualising and Verbalising Phrases

Your words made me picture….

You know what, I didn’t picture the ……

What should I see for the …..

What did you see for the ……

Help me picture the _______ better

Is it _____ or _______?

Now my picture is getting better.

What do these words make you picture?

I’ll describe the picture to you and you check if I’m right.

(4) Sentence Level Imagery

Begin this step by overlapping from a known noun (eg cat) to a sentence (eg ‘The cat is under the chair’).

Present in three modes:

- you read aloud to the students

- students read aloud

- students read silently

Underline key words – ask which are the main words to be imaged.

Example sentences:

The boy ran up the hill.

The girl ran down the hill.

The girl walked to the school.

The dog jumped across the water.

The girl throws the ball.

The elephant’s trunk was swinging back and forth.

He drank a glass of water very slowly, then very quickly.

Use sentences from sources such as: readers, storybooks, textbooks, children’s own storywriting, class materials.

Five Principles of Questioning

• Do not ask yes or no questions

• Question with choice and contrast

• Respond to the student’s response

• Question to the gestalt

• Ask interpretative questions

(5) Sentence by Sentence Imagery

You need coloured felt or paper squares.

• start with low level material (eg grade 3) and gradually increase complexity of sentences

• for the initial sentence use detailed imagery with structure words. These images must be linked to each other. The initial sentence imagery is very important because short paragraphs are often written with the main idea as the first sentence.

• Coloured squares are used to represent each sentence.

• Ask a volunteer to give a “picture summary” of his/her image. The student points to each coloured square and describes each picture – “here I saw….”

• Another student can give a ‘word summary’ of the image which is a paraphrase of the actual words read. “This story is about…”

• Begin to use questions that aid in locating and remembering, getting the main idea, inferring, drawing conclusions, predicting and evaluating.

HOTS = Higher Order Thinking Skills

What is the main idea?

Was the main idea about ______ or ______?

What will happen next?

What can we conclude?

Do you agree or not?

Why?

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(5) Paragraph Level Imagery

• use 3 modalities

- you read to the student

- students read aloud

- students read silently

• no coloured squares or structure words are necessary

• no picture summary. Instead the student describes specific images after giving a word summary.

• Use HOTS

• Students may reread all or part of the content in order to form a better image.

• Although imaging is more automatic and assumed at this level, question specifics to determine that the individual is actually imaging and not just restating the sentences or paragraphs.

• Divide the class into pairs. Students read a word paragraph and give a word summary together.

• Divide the class into groups of 5. Assign each member a task – to underline key words, V&V the first sentence, next sentence etc, give a word summary

Some sample paragraphs are (you can find others in classroom materials):

All mammals need some sort of defence against their enemies. Only the largest of carnivores are so fierce that they need fear no enemies other than human beings. If necessary they can use the weapons normally used in hunting to defend themselves. Herbivores are less well armed, but many of them can run fast, while others hide in burrows, or climb trees for safety.

Different kinds of flying squirrels live in the forests of northern Europe and Asia, and North America. When they glide from one tree to another they lose some height on the way. They therefore land with the head pointing upwards, and immediately climb the tree ready for the next take-off.

Some bats eat fish, and others feed on the nectar of flowers, spreading pollen in the process just as bees do. However, most small bats feed on night-flying insects such as moths. It is not true that bats are blind, but they have only small eyes. In any case, they do their hunting when it is too dark to see well. Instead of their eyes they use the echoes of very high-pitched sounds that they make as they fly.

In the warm and hot parts of the world ants and termites are very common. Termites are often called “white ants”, but they are not ants at all. However, like ants, they are social insects, and huge numbers of them live together in nests. Ants’ and termites’ nests are sometimes built on the ground, and sometimes in trees.

Rats and mice, squirrels, porcupines, and all of their relations make up a group of mammals called the rodents. All of them have chisel-shaped pairs of incisor teeth at the fronts of their mouths, and grinding teeth further back. The rodents are the largest single group of mammals.

The early mammals were probably nocturnal, they slept during the day and woke up at night. The cold blooded dinosaurs became very sluggish and inactive in the cool night. While the dinosaurs slept, the tiny mammals could wander safely and eat insects and worms.

When all the dinosaurs became extinct, there was more space on the land and mammals began to live in new places. Slowly, over several million years, they began to change. Some of them became suited to living in trees, and had hands which could grip the branches. Others adapted to life in the water and developed smooth, streamlined bodies.

The cave bear lived about 70,000 years ago, at the same time as stone-age people. It was larger then a modern brown bear and measured 3 m from nose to tail. The cave bear ate meat and plants. It was a strong animal, but it could not run very fast to catch other animals.

When you look at the outside of a mammal’s body, the hair or fur is what shows. It shows to other animals, both friends and enemies too, so its colour is important. Very often mammals have fur coloured to match the backgrounds against which they live, thus providing camouflage.

For most mammals the most important sense is smell. They have large snouts inside which are very efficient noses. Most mammals also have very keen ears, and many of them can hear sounds which are too shrill for the human ear to detect.

The platypus is an expert swimmer. Its dense fur traps air and keeps its skin dry as it swims. It feeds on water insects, tadpoles, snails and shrimp, dabbling with its duck-like bill.

The Tasmanian devil is the largest carnivorous marsupial to survive. Once it lived on the Australian mainland, but now it is found only on the island of Tasmania. It is as large as a medium-sized dog, and feeds on wallabies, other mammals and birds.

The first elephants lived about 40 million years ago. They did not look much like elephants. They had no trunks or tusks and were only the size of pigs. Over millions of years, as elephants evolved, they became larger and heavier. This helped to protect them from small carnivores. They also developed long trunks.

Liquid from chewed food sticks to your teeth. You cannot see this. But if you slide your tongue round your teeth, they may feel gluey. If the stickiness stays, it makes tiny holes in your teeth. This is a bit like the rust you get on metal tools when you leave them wet. Germs in the air make the holes deeper and deeper. When they reach the feeling part under the hard part of your teeth, they hurt a lot.

Your heart is a pump that keeps blood flowing round. It squeezes out blood like a squeezy bottle. It sends blood to your lungs to get rid of waste gas and pick up oxygen. It sends blood round your body to take oxygen to all the cells.

Your eye is very much like a camera. A camera takes in light rays from the outside world and squeezes them to fit on a small piece of film. Your eye gathers light rays into a very tiny picture that fits on the back of your eyeball. A nerve from this spot sends the picture to your brain.

(6) Using V&V in small groups and the classroom

Practical considerations

• Weeks available

• Length of session – optimum ¾ hour to 1 hour

• Practice – follow up by class teacher as much as possible

• Names on desk for whole class lessons

• Ensure teacher/parent support and commitment to follow through

Individual session order

1. setting the climate and picture to picture

2. word imaging

3. sentence imaging

4. sentence by sentence imaging

5. sentence by sentence imaging with Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)

6. multiple sentence imaging

7. whole paragraph imaging

8. paragraph by paragraph imaging

9. whole page imaging

Group session order

1. climate and word level imaging – picture to picture, personal , known noun and fantasy imaging using Gross Structure words

2. word level imaging – continue picture to picture, personal, known noun and fantasy introducing Fine Structure words

3. sentence level imaging

4. sentence level imaging with HOTS

5. paragraph imaging

6. paragraph imaging up to a page

Principles of Questioning

• Do not as yes/no questions

• Question with choice and contrast

• Respond to the student’s response

• Question to the gestalt (main idea)

• Ask interpretive questions

Use class material if possible.

Write questions on cards.

Building Vocabulary

• make vocabulary cards for new words

• write the word on the front of the card

• on the back write a dictionary definition and a sentence using the word, but leave a space for the word

• draw a picture

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The facilitator’s response is the background of the Visualising and Verbalising Program.

Remember:

• Encourage gestures and movement

• Encourage the students to show you what they mean

• Encourage students to shut their eyes to assist in seeing the picture they have created

• The language of the facilitator is important

• Picture summary vs word summary – use the structure words to make a summary of the image – this is the picture summary. Encourage the students to give a word summary ie what is the paragraph really about? Did the author write about a cat that is ten feet tall?

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