About This Book: THIS IS NOT MY HAT
By Jon Klassen
his popular book has two story streams. One stream is through the illustrations where the action in the plot unfolds. The other story stream is through the text where the thoughts of the little “thief” are revealed. Along with the unique relationship between illustrations and text, there are a couple of parts in the book that lend themselves to rich practice in visualizing. Visualizing is a “Best Practice” in the building of strong reading comprehension strategies.
Several years ago, I read an article in Psychology Today: “Seeing is Believing: The Power of Visualization” (December 2, 2009, written by Angie LeVan). In the article, Ms. LeVan gives powerful examples of professional athletes using visualization to enhance their physical performance. From my work with a wide range of ages and abilities, visualizing is a powerful tool that strong readers use both to enhance their enjoyment of text and to self-monitor their comprehension. When a skilled reader realizes that a mental image is “fuzzy” or not making sense, other “fix-up” skills are employed to clear up the image (aka: comprehension).
As you are reading this story, share your mental images with the listener. Be detailed. Include as many of the senses as you can. Share not only what you see, hear, taste, etc., but also the feelings that the text and illustrations evoke in you.
To unlock the full potential that visualizing has to enrich comprehension, visualization must be practiced. Along with talking about visualization, drawing the mental images or dramatizing them with your children are great fun and can provide some lasting memories.