Wilhelm, Chapter 5 - Reading Is Seeing

I love the depths of teaching difficulties Wilhelm explores in this book. It would seem that drama would be the cure all to fix all who students who can't read, but no. What about those students who don't want to or can't (?) participate in drama exercises? Can we reach these students as well?

This chapter explores the importance of visualization in the reading process. Successful readers visualize automatically as they are reading. Some students only see words as a series of letters to decode. And yet, these students enjoy reading comic books. They are able to interact with these stories in the way you would expect a successful reader to interact with any piece of literature. The pictures, as visual representations of the text, allow them to enter the world they were reading.

I'd like to stress how important it is here that we begin to redefine what exactly is text. These are the sorts of stories the media and politicians running for office like to seize upon when they talk about the need for education reform. See how education has fallen to the lowest denominator? As educators, we need to be able to defend our positions and our methodologies. In this case, visualization is a gateway to the world of reading, but it is not the end of the road for these students. Once students learn to respond to text via visualization, they learn to use the same practices in their heads as they read.

Wilhelm shows that visualization is a great technique for students of all ability levels because it allows them to respond in very natural ways and then share their responses with each other (138). These responses are very individual and always creative. It allows students to respond without worry of censure or “doing it wrong.”
Finally, as a proponent of teaching to the multiple intelligences, I welcome visualization as another way students can respond to text. I always allow multiple options for unit projects. I feel that one-size-fits-all assessments are not fair to all students because they don't allow students to display their knowledge in the way they are best suited.