Visualizing and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

I keep thinking that my kiddos and I will fall into a consistant classroom rhythm, but it hasn’t happened yet. Every time I feel like we are close to one…. something happens, and we take a step back. We will get there though! I just know it!


Anyways…our skill for the last two weeks was visualization. My kiddos rocked it. I am so proud! My class loved doing the poems Oh No!, Green Giant, and My Neighbor’s Dog is Purple. We also branched out and spent a lot of time reading poems and trade books to help us strengthen our visualizing skills. 


Here is one of my favorites activities from this skill! I was surprised that most of my students had never read the book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and only a handful had seen the movie. So, I hopped on the opportunity and paired this trade book up with a visualizing activity.


I read the story to the kiddos but would NOT share the pictures with them. It about killed the kids AND ME to not share the fabulous illustrations with them while I read. But, there is something to be said about making the students actually listen to the text, pay attention to the descriptive details and create images on their own.


After reading the story, I gave the students an excerpt from the story. The kiddos highlighted details and key information that they thought was important and then drew an image based on the information that they found in the text.


I loved it. The kids loved it. And, I was very entertained with the            (photo credit for this picture goes one of the kiddos from my teamie’s class!)