Knowledge and Skills Statement
Comprehension skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student uses metacognitive skills to both develop and deepen comprehension of increasingly complex texts.
Demonstrated Proficiency of ELA.7.5.D
Task students with creating illustrations for a text they are reading. Students may wish to include captions. A teacher may wish to have students share their work with younger students in order to observe their explanations of their illustrations as they relate to the the text.
Further Explanation
This assessment requires students to demonstrate a deeper understanding of a text through illustration of the mental images they create while reading. Being able to create accurate mental images is a strong indicator that students understand what they are reading. Observation of student explanations can help a teacher determine students’ levels of proficiency in this skill.
Supporting Information for ELA.7.5.D
Research
1. Boerma, I. E., Mole, S. E., & Jolles, J. (2016). Reading pictures for story comprehension requires mental imagery skills. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1630. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01630
Summary: In this study, researchers examined the influence of mental imagery on the reading comprehension of 150 fifth graders. The study was comprised of two control groups and one experimental group. The two control groups used either the full chapter with words only or with images only. The experimental group read a chapter from a book that alternated text blocks followed by one to two pages of images. The findings revealed that students with higher mental imagery skills outperformed those students with lower mental imagery skills. This suggests that texts and images should be integrated in order to increase students' reading comprehension.
2. De Koning, B. B., & van der Schoot, M. (2013). Becoming part of the story!: Refueling the interest in visualization strategies for reading comprehension. Educational Psychology Review, 25, 261–287.
Summary: This article includes different ways to use visualization to encourage readers to build their own visual representations of text. The authors discuss studies and strategies already considered best practices. Multiple visualization strategies are included.