Grade Two Visualizing Lesson

Hello Ocean - Hola Mar

By Pam Munoz Ryan

This beautiful book is the story of a young girl's trip to the beach. Using the five senses she
describes the different ocean treasures she encounters along the way. This book has an
environmental connection through the sights and sounds of the ocean. The cultural connection
is through the book's author, Pam Munoz Ryan, who is half-Mexican. She has created versions
of this book with the Spanish translation.

English version of story - read aloud

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t0Ll6Tyd6Vw

Condensed version of story but contains dual-language reading

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M5BvgikW_zU

Our school participates annually in The Great Canadian Shoreline Clean-Up.

https://www.vanaqua.org/act/direct-action/great-canadian-shoreline-cleanup
This is a great book I've used in the past leading up to shoreline clean-up day. It helps reinforce
the ecological principles of the importance of keeping our beaches beautiful and clean.

I integrate Adrienne Gears Reading Powers into my language arts program. This is something
we start at the beginning of the year, and work on all through the year. The reading powers we
focus on in grade two are connecting, visualizing and questioning. This lesson will focus on
visualizing, a reading power that encourages readers to make pictures in their mind while they
are reading. This reading power is familiar to my students and has been previously taught.
The language in this book is quite lyrical, which makes it a perfect choice for visualizing.
However, the vocabulary in this story would be quite challenging for a level 1 or 2 ELL student.
In order to support these learners I would front-load the students by pre-teaching some of the
words found in the story (chameleon, hue, speckled, amber, nook, rumour, floats, embrace,
fragrant, ancient). Vocabulary cards could be created with visuals to assist ELL students in
learning the new vocabulary.

To start the lesson I would review with the students what does it mean to visualize?

We would especially touch on using all of our senses to help us visualize (sight, sound, touch,
taste and feel). I would pass around some beach theme objects for the students to explore
with their senses (sand, seashells, towel, cd of beach sounds, sunscreen) before starting the
story. The students will be instructed to listen for words that connect to their different senses in
the story.

I would then read the story aloud to the students - for a visualizing activity I normally wouldn't
show the pictures on the first read through, but the vocabulary is quite tricky in this story so I
would show the illustrations as I go. After reading the story the students would go back to their
groups and be given the following organizer on a large piece of chart paper. I would read the
story again and this time the students can add words and pictures to the senses chart as we go:
Students will have the opportunity to work together to come up with ideas for their chart. They
will also be able to present one or two ideas from their chart with the whole class.

Scaffolds for ELL students

Because of the high-level vocabulary in this story I think it would be best suited for ELLs with a
higher level of receptive and expressive language proficiency, likely level 4.

The scaffolds built into this lesson to support ELLs at a lower proficiency level include the use of
a teacher read aloud, the ability for students to talk and share ideas with other students in a
small group, the use of concrete objects to tap into students prior knowledge and experiences of
being at the beach, and visual vocabulary cards which students can use to help fill in the chart.

- teachers should just be aware that a student who has recently arrived in Canada may
have had a scary or negative experience with the ocean (eg - if they travelled by boat)

This lesson would support the development of ELLs language, literacy and vocabulary skills as
well as promote classroom interactions.

References
The GO To Strategies: Scaffolding Options for Teachers of English Language Learners, K-12.
http://www.cal.org/content/download/1906/22045/file/go-to-strategies.pdf

Gear, Adrienne. Reading Power: Teaching Students to Think While They Read, Revised
Edition. Pembroke Publishers, 2015.