The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer is about a young boy named Brian who finds an orange salamander in the woods. Brian takes the salamander home. When Brian brings the salamander home his mom asks Brian many questions, like where will the salamander live, where he will sleep, what he will eat and so on. Brian comes up with responses to all of his mother's questions. His imagination eventually turns his responses into a fantasy story. He goes on and on about all of the things that the salamander will have and about how his bedroom will turn into a big beautiful forest.
The Salamander Room is a great book for teaching visualization because the text is very descriptive. When Brian describes the things he would do to his room to make the salamander comfortable he uses very descriptive language. For example when Brian says “I will
carpet my room with shiny wet leaves
and water them so he can slide around and play.” The reader can picture a room with shiny wet leaves on th e floor . To teach students how to use visualizing as a comprehension strategy you could read the story aloud to the students and share the pictures until you come to a quote you have already picked out. Then, stop! Don't show the picture....yet. Have the students stop and think about what they see in their minds and have them to share their mental picture with the class . You could also add some of the ideas that the students come up with to a chart with one side labeled quote from text and our mental image.We enjoyed this book. The illustrations in this book are very nice and we think students would enjoy both the book and the illustrations.
Here's a link to a read aloud of The Salamander Room:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZrtzCA9pmY
The link to our visualizing activity : http://theteachingthief.blogspot.com/2012/07/visualizing-beyond-text-with.html
This book sounds really cute and I think that the students would adore it! It it great that within the book the child himself uses his imagination to come up with his ideas as how to make the salamander feel at home. I think it is great that you chose a book that had very discriptive words that allows the students to easily imagine what it would look like. The idea of making the chart is great! It allows the students to connect the text to what they think. I want to get this book for my future classroom. Great Blog!
ReplyDelete-- Elizabeth Waldron
I think this a great text-to-self all students can relate to finding a pet and would do anything possible to convince their parents they can make it comfrotable for them to be able to keep the salamander. I love the activty..Nikki Revell
ReplyDeleteThis is really a great book to use for visualizing. Boys, especially, will identify with this story and have no problem visualizing the things in the book. They could really connect with using their imagination as if they found the salamander and how they would care for it. You could even use this story when teaching about habitats in the classroom. ~Karen
ReplyDeleteSince Brain really uses his imagination in this book, I think it's a great one to use for visualizing. The reason I say that is because since his imagination is used and some of the answers to his moms questions are far fetched, the children can visualize these responses. Hopefully children will enjoy exploring where fantasy books can take them. Whitney
ReplyDeleteThis books sounds like a really great book to use to teach visualizing. Students would greatly connect to this through imagination, especially the boys! They love anything to do with something that is creepy, crawly :) -- Sarah
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