One of the key skills of College & Career Readiness for students is making inferences from and interpreting a given text using textual evidence.  This skill must be introduced early on in our primary classrooms and must continue through the grade continuum.

One simple and accessible way to support our young learners in this skill is through the use of Visual Thinking Strategy (VTS) with Picture Books.  In this two part lesson, students will first engage with a visual text taken from a picture book and make inferences about what is going on in the image based on textual evidence.  In part two of the lesson, the learning continues as students view the story in its entirety and discover whether their inferences match the actual story.

We leverage Schoology, a Learning Management System (LMS), to facilitate the classroom discussion.  In part one, students share their thinking with their peers about what they believe is happening in the image, citing textual evidence.  In part two, students have a discussion about whether their inferences match the actual story.  In both parts of the lesson, students have the option to post an analysis of how others’ thinking relates to their own in the form of a reply.

What is Visual Thinking Strategy (VTS)?  

It is an inquiry-based strategy where students independently observe an image and make an interpretation of it based on evidence from the text; in this case, the image.

It is a simple and effective strategy to support students in developing thinking skills, oral and written language literacy, visual literacy, and collaborative interactions with their peers.

STEPS:

1. Project an image (photo, drawing, etc.)
2. Ask the students to closely and silently observe the image for about a minute
3. Three questions to guide the observation and discussion:
   1. What do you think is going on here?
   2. What do you see that makes you say that?
   3. What more can we find?

Digital Tools Leveraged in this Lesson

Schoology, a Learning Management System (LMS), was leveraged in this lesson to provide an opportunity for students to share their thinking and make connections with each other in order to broaden their perspective and enrich their learning.

Many organizations have channels on YouTube where they post and share collections of videos.  In this lesson, we accessed a storytelling channel for its content on a specific picture book.  Although YouTube has engaging and informative content at all levels, it is important for teachers to preview the content for audience appropriateness prior to video selection.  Teachers might also consider downloading the video content to avoid student exposure to paid advertisements.