Text to Life Connections

In chapter 7 Bringing Text to Life it talks about using sensory and emotional images to enhance comprehension. I chose to read this chapter because this is something that I found useful for me as an Elementary student and I still do today. I think the main part of this chapter brings the idea that not every student learns the same way. Some students may get the same concepts and ideas from an artistic, musical, or some other type of reference that the student has dealt with personally. “Paintings can conjure images from the senses and from emotions,” (page 176). I have found that you can have quite a discussion off of one painting or drawing. It is also something that adds to text or information. Images or music can make a connection for a student to help them relate to the topic you are talking about. I think this type of learning takes a lot of effort on the teachers part, and obviously can not be done for every single topic and lesson because there is not enough time in the day for that. Another powerful thing I found in this section was the idea that “teachers know that students who struggle are often disengaged and don’t choose to read outside of school (or within for that matter!).” (176). I think teachers often make this judgement very early and then just keep punishing instead of finding a solution. But I liked that it pointed out that, “yet we can’t take for granted that students create images spontaneously as they read.” (176). If you think about how much TV, video games, drawings, etc that kids are exposed to you will realize that your students more often then not are going to be making mental images of something and will be able to relate some topics to something in their life. If you think that your students can not make images because they do not know how or have not had experience, then it would be important to looking into how to start making those images. Maybe by modeling yourself what images you see when you read a certain thing. Overall, I really liked this chapter and I think it brought up a lot of important parts about how images and text to life connections can really help kids comprehend literature. A lot of time words can be very overwhelming for a variety of reasons, and if you can find something that you can relate to then it will make that large text a little bit smaller.