ABOUT THIS BOOK: MAKE WAY FOR DUCKLINGS This classic children’s picture book is older than I am! (Though, not by much.) It is a Caldecott Medal winner for the most distinguished American picture book of 1941.
Not only is it a warm story of a father and mother duck taking care of their eight ducklings, it is a story perfect to practice the reading comprehension Best Practice of visualizing. (Note: Why This Book? for This Is Not My Hat, a June selection)
The soft neutral sketches in this picture book lend themselves to creating a movie in the listener’s head. Living in the twenty-first century we know that our children’s worlds are full of visual images created by others. Making the reader’s own movie helps the text come alive and enhances recall. However, visualizing takes much guided practice.
The importance of visualizing first came to my attention through a wonderful book for teachers called Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader’s Workshop, 1997, by Ellin O. Keene and Susan Zimmermann. It brought new dimension to not only my teaching, but the teaching of many others. It reminds instructors that visualizing is not just seeing the picture, but bringing in sensory information from all five senses. To take visualizing to its full potential adds depth to your comprehension and strengthens your memory!