Picture Walk: A Preview

Use pantomime performance to drive your students to predict, question, and cite main ideas. With this dramatic lesson plan, your class will craftily capture information on a graphic organizer to boost their reading comprehension!

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to preview texts by noting predictions, questions, and main ideas with graphic organizers.

Introduction

(10 minutes)

Write, number, and display the following sentence starters to your class: * 1. I predict... * 2. I think the main idea is... * 3. I wonder why…
Explain to your class that you are going to pantomime (perform silently without speaking) a picture walk. A picture walk is a preview technique when you page through a text without reading it, just looking at the pictures, asking questions, and making observations and predictions.
Tell your students to silently hold up fingers (up to three) for sentence starters of their choice if it applies during your pantomime picture walk. You won’t be speaking, so it’s up to them to raise quiet hands to stop you! Students may share out when called on.
Act out the preview, slowly showing and turning pages towards the class as you look to the audience. As students watch, they will silently raise a hand with one, two, or three fingers held high to be selected to comment.
Lead your class through the activity, allowing students to share their predictions, main ideas, and questions through the text’s end.
Explain to your students how useful thoughts and predictions could be if they could compare them after reading the story!
Share the lesson objective: Note predictions, main ideas, and questions on a graphic organizer while previewing text.