Janet and Pam, I don't know if what I do helps, but here goes: I took a workshop a few years back in the Lindamood-Bell Visualization/Verbalization Approach. Their whole philosophy is to get kids to make a mental picture in their minds of what they are reading. I teach LD kids who all have reading disabilities: comprehension, decoding, etc. Most of them, thankfully, are really good artists, so we start with drawing pictures of what the words mean. For example, if the word is exaggerate, I might ask the kids to give an example of when they exaggerated a situation to a friend, family member, etc. Next, they draw pictures of themselves exaggerating how much homework they have, how many chores they have to do, etc. Then, they write a sentence about the picture. Last, they define the word using their own words. I have them put this into a notebook and tell them to copy their drawings or sentences on one side of an index card with a definition on the other to help them study. I don't always succeed, but I try to use their words in our conversations to reinforce and 'verbalize" the language in context. So if our room is hot, which it was the last few weeks of school, I might tell the kids it was so hot in our room, I felt like it was 500 degrees. Then ask the kids if I was exaggerating, or it really was 500 degrees! The kids told me this really helped them to remember their words, and not just for their tests, which is the real test of understanding. Hope this helps.
Laurie Wasserman, NBCT/TLN Grade 6 Special Needs Teacher Medford, Massachusetts [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
