reading comprehension Archives

Reading Comprehension Illustrating a Story

This week JDaniel and I read the book Amelia Bedelia Helps Out. JDaniel loves the humorous way Amelia messes things up by not understanding that words have multiple meanings. I love her too. She turns 50 this year. (That means that people have been chuckling at her missteps for over half a century. ) It is her misunderstanding that I decided to focus on in this reading comprehension activity called illustrating a story.

JDaniel and I have read this story many many times in the past. Since we have been talking about gardening for the past few weeks, this book so needed to be read again. A few of her mistakes are related to gardening. She weeds the garden by adding weeds. She stakes the beans by wrapping steaks around them. Amelia uses a duster to dust the potato bugs with bug powder.

She also does several other odd things thinking she is doing the right thing. You just have to love her and giggle at what she does that is part of the fun of reading her stories.

Reading Comprehension – Illustrating a Story

Picture walking through a story means you flip through a story and look at the clues the pictures give as to what is happening in the story. Illustrating a story is the opposite of picture walking. During illustrate a story, a child flips through a book and looks for key concepts and pictures in a story they have already heard or read. They then draw them on a larger roll of paper in the order they happened in the story.

We looked through the story and picked four of the events that we wanted to draw. Both JDaniel and I worked on the drawings and we talked about what was happening in that part of the story.

Reading Comprehension Illustrating a Story - Amelia Bedelia Helps Out

Drawing Weeds

I drew the weeds and JDaniel added details to them. We talked about how they needed to be very big weeds just like the ones Amelia Bedelia had added to the garden.

Drawing Bean Plants and Steaks

It was so much fun to draw the bean plants and add pink steaks onto them. We don’t eat steaks often at our house. JDaniel kept having to refer to the book to see what they looked like.

Dusting Potato Bugs

I tried drawing a potato bug like the one in the book and JDaniel told me it was not exciting. I didn’t know that they were supposed to be exciting. He grabbed a gray crayon after drawing his leaf and made one that was more exciting than mine.

Giving The Chickens Scraps

JDaniel seemed to have lost interest in drawing when we got to give the chicken scraps of cloth. I started the chicken and he finished it. The feathers and feet are all his. I just love them.

When we finished, I had him walk me through the events of the story we had selected. I was expecting to just talk about what had happened. JDaniel grabbed the book and looked through it to find each of the events. I love that he had us go through the book as we discussed it.

While his not yet reading, he has learned to show that he comprehends what is being read to him. I think we will be illustrating a story again soon. As he does learn to read and write better, I will have him add keywords from the text to the pictures. We will be doing this reading comprehension activity again.