Mental models for comprehension

    If it's the beginning of the school year, I must be talking about mental models! In reading, a mental model is a reader's representation of the text. It's no exaggeration to say that everything I do in reading for the rest of the school year will depend on whether or not students can build rich, elaborate mental models based on the details from the text.

A view of my school from the hillside. After our mental
models discussions, we went to the hillside to try to
draw a map of the school, using our mental models and
what we saw.

    If I can teach students how to access and talk about their mental models, then I can quickly figure out where comprehension is breaking down. These lessons need to start early!

   This year, I began with just a few images and sentences. Students were sitting up on the carpet, close enough so that I could quickly look at them and see their reactions. (This is so much easier with fourth graders than with sixth graders.)

    cat

    I started with this because it is so simple. I asked, "What are you seeing in your mind? Why?" It is really amazing that just a few marks on the page can make everyone picture the same thing!  Except--our cats weren't really the same. Without information about what the cat looks like, everyone was picturing a slightly different cat. This is what readers do all the time.

  The cat sat on the bed.

   I showed this sentence, but did not read it aloud. I wanted students to do this step. Then we talked about how our mental models changed.

The giant cat sat on the bed.

    When kids start to laugh at this sentence, I know that they are making mental models! Students liked talking about how their mental models updated to reflect this new information.

The giant cat sat on Mrs. Kissner's bed.

   Now more kids laughed, and interestingly enough most of them looked at me as soon as they finished reading the sentence. This is a totally natural reaction. To show them how they can use their mental models to build an inference, I asked, "How do you think I would feel about this?" They shared different emotions--scared, mad, unhappy--all of which could be supported. They don't know me very well yet so they don't know that a giant cat on my bed would probably make me feel curious, intrigued, and appreciative.

    The next step was to have students work with partners to figure out some clues that an alien left. At the start of the year I always have trouble foreseeing how students will do with various activities, and this one was no exception. Students talked and shared as they worked, and some were truly puzzled by the clues.  This was all good information for me! After all, when we read longer texts they will need to build even richer, more detailed mental models...the more I know about their processes, the more I can offer the right support.

Building mental models from Emily Kissner

    If your students would like to know more about Zomack, he is in the story "Boring, Boring, Boring" included in the Visualizing PowerPoint and Activities pack. If you have already downloaded it, do check out the new version with updated formatting and more activities.

    Taking the time to develop the importance of a changing mental model is vital. As transitional readers move from stories with picture support to stories without picture support, they need to work much harder to build mental models and visualize concepts from the text. Taking the time to set this up from the start is important for later success.

Other posts about mental models
Clicks and Clunks and Mental Models
Helping Kids to Build Mental Models
Help for Word Callers: Using Manipulatives

Helping Kids to Build Mental Models

What is a mental model? I worked with my readers to figure this out this week. We had already talked about the word "model" in social studies class. (This site from National Geographic has a nice lesson for understanding what a model is.) I told students, "Mental means in your brain. So a mental model is a model of a text in your brain."

We went back to the last text we had shared together, and discussed how we pictured this text in our brains. My students are familiar with the words visualize and schema, so we looked at how readers use visualizing and their schema as they build mental models.

These mental models will be important for us as we move into more complicated texts this spring. Some of the stories that are ahead will have holes in the narratives, flashbacks, or twist endings. Having a mental representation of the text will be vital for readers to comprehend these more complex narratives.

The first step, then, is to help readers see what happens when their mental models shift. How could I get students to understand this? I decided to try an error detection exercise. In these kinds of tasks, a reader needs to read to find an error. I was very cautious about this--I don't want kids to think that reading is about finding the mistake!--but I wanted them to understand what it feels like when there is a detail that just doesn't fit.

They loved it! We used choral reading to read the passage together. When they found the error in the first passage, some started laughing. "I can picture it, but it doesn't make sense," one student said. Then, they had to figure out a word that could fit in the text. This was a little trickier for them, but all of them figured out a word that would fit.

The next passage was a little more difficult. It was interesting watching students as they worked on this one. They came up with different ways to fix the passage. Some changed the weather in the sentence, while others changed the kind of field that the game would be played on. After we did a few more, students worked with their partners to write their own little texts. Some of them turned out very well--one group wrote about a girl who was playing basketball and "kicked" the ball into the net. At the end, we talked about how they had built mental models for each text. They found the whole activity very enjoyable, which is always a plus!

If you try this with your students, here are some questions to ask:

-What are you visualizing?
-What background knowledge do you need to use?
-How did the mistake affect your mental model?

...and, of course, keep the search for errors short and sweet. Next, we're using what we've learned to read a text with a twist ending. Readers will need to make some fast adjustments to their mental models to understand what is going on. Instead of changing the text, they'll have to change their mental models. Hopefully, finding these errors will have given them some scaffolding for this next step.

Making mental models

View more documents from Emily Kissner

The First Day!

Three more days...and then the students will arrive. While I'm sad to see the end of summer, I am starting to feel a little bit of excitement for the new school year. (Thank heavens!) I can't help but think about what I'm going to do the first day, scribbling down notes on whatever paper I can find.

My focus for the first few days of school will be to help students realize how they can be great learners. Most of my fourth graders are a little anxious about the challenges of the new grade. I want them to get learning and feel successful right from the start.

I've already planned to do the What's Missing game from the Think-ets set, probably during my first few science sessions. While my first day's schedule is not entirely finished, here are two things that I know I'll be doing.

Distraction (from The Forest and the Trees): Too often, students don't realize that they have control over their attention. They allow themselves to be distracted by all of the little things going on in the room. I have to get students to realize their role in paying attention right from the start. After all, in my room, we can have two fans blowing, classes walking by in the hallway, birds chirping outdoors, and even the town's volunteer fire siren going off right down the hill. If students allow each little noise to be a distraction, they will have a very fractured learning experience.

The game of Distraction is simple. A student reads aloud from an informational book. During the reading, I zoom around the room, trying to be as distracting as possible. The kids think that this is really funny! After the reading is over, I ask students five simple questions based on the reading. Their success depends on how well they were able to tune out the distractions and focus on the reading. Then we talk about how they were successful or not. Invariably, some students are good at this, and can explain their strategies to others. We try it a few more times so that students can try out the strategies and see success.

Schema Maps: One of the tasks for the first day of school is a school tour. My fourth graders are new to the school, so a tour is definitely needed. This year, I'm going to combine the tour with a discussion of schema.

Early in the morning, I'm going to ask students to try to create a map of our school, labeling as many features as they know. They will probably find this challenging! Then, we'll walk around the school with our original maps on clipboards. Students will be able to make changes as we go. When we return to the room, we'll make new maps to show what we have learned. This will be an introduction to schema. Students will have a concrete example of how they can add to and change their schema. And our school tour--one of my least favorite first day chores--will have an added dimension of learning.

Vernal Pools

At this time of year, I love to put on muddy shoes and explore vernal pools. There are so many neat creatures that I never knew existed! Caught in a plastic cup, they are surprisingly common creatures that can easily be viewed with a 5x or 10x microscope. Students loved looking at them--especially when we realized that we were looking at a variety called "Cyclops".

This week, students are reading "Migrating Mole Salamanders". (It's a short text that I wrote. If you're interested in a copy, send me a message--I haven't posted it online yet.) We were all fascinated by the thought of mole salamanders migrating all around us. Although I resolved to go out and try to look for them, the first rainy March night happened after a marathon 12 hour parent conference day. No mole salamanders for me--yet!

In addition to the vernal pool pieces in Text Structure Resources, students might also enjoy "Find Out About Fairy Shrimp." This tells about fairy shrimp, tiny little creatures that live in vernal pools. It's a great text to use to show students how to add to their schema as they read.

How do students like all of this vernal pool stuff? Well, last week, a student brought in skunk cabbage flowers. That's right, skunk cabbage flowers! "I thought they'd be neat to see under the microscopes," he said. And he was absolutely right. Magnified, a skunk cabbage flower is really beautiful. (And it was just a little smelly.)