Reading Strategy: Visualize

Good readers picture in their minds what is happening as they read a story. These images sometimes create feelings, or emotional responses. Your own experiences and your imagination help you form emotional responses.

Reading Strategy Visualize
    How to Identify Emotional Responses

  • 1. Make a Double-Entry Journal As you read, write words and phrases that make pictures in your mind.

  • 2. Visualize Think about each mental image. How does it make you feel?

  • 3. Respond Describe what you feel in your journal.

Strategy in Action

Here’s how one student used a Double-Entry Journal to identify her emotional responses to the text.

Look Into the Text

I lived with my mother and father, grandparents, and two sisters in a small mud-and-thatch house. We were considered wealthy because my father owned many cattle.

As a young boy, I was frightened of these big animals.

“I am too small to care for such big animals!” I cried when my father told me I would have to learn to tend the cattle.

Double-Entry Journal

Words and PhrasesMy Response
frightened of these big animalsThis reminds me of when I was a child, and I was afraid of my neighbor’s dog. It was so big that it knocked me down!

Practice Together

Follow the steps in the How-To box. Create a Double-Entry Journal. Reread the passage, and look for other words or phrases that create an emotional response. Add them to your Double-Entry Journal.