Words Paint

     The Aminal is an old book that never gets old with students.  I've used it with Kindergarten through 3rd graders and they've all loved it.  It's great to use to teach visualization as a comprehension strategy, and to teach about using specific nouns, verbs, and adjectives to make our writing "paint pictures."
When I use it, I put it in a folder and don't show any pictures to the students.  Students fold and divide a piece of paper into 8 boxes.  On the first box, they write the title and authors, and their names.  On boxes 2 - 7 they listen to each child's description and draw what they picture.  On the 8th box, they write "I think it is..." and draw a picture.  Before doing this, we go back and think about what we know from what Patrick initially said, often I re-read those pages so they can make their predictions.

     Then I re-read each description and we look at the illustrations of what each child pictured, comparing the books' illustrations to ours.  Kids get a kick out of seeing the similarities and differences, and we talk about what specific words may have been better to use.  When we unveil the final picture that shows what the "aminal" is, students are usually surprised.  Of course, there are always a couple of students that are right on target, but for the most part few get the prediction correct.  This is a great opportunity to talk about how readers have to be like detectives as they read, going back to re-read sections, and storing clues throughout their reading.