Another one of my
favorite activities is to use poetry to teach visualization.  Since I
teach this during testing, I try to add in some interesting hands on element to
the lesson.
I project this poem by Rachel
Fields.
Grandmother’s
Brook
Grandmother tells me about a brook
She used to pass on her way to school;
A quick, brown brook with a rushing sound,
And moss-green edges, thick and cool.
When she was the age I am now
She would cross over it, stone by
stone.
I like to think how she must have looked
Under the greenery, all alone.
Sometimes I ask her: “Is it there,
That brook you played by— the same,
today?”
And she says she hasn’t a doubt it is-
It’s children who change and go away.
First I talk about how to make friends and
understand a poem.  I read the poem two
times.  Then I read it line by line and
talk about what I notice in the poem. 
Some of the things we discuss are:
·       
What is a brook?  What would it look like or sound like? I have
students close their eyes and visualize.
·       
Who is the speaker?  How do we know?
·       
How old is the speaker?
·       
How did she cross the brook?  What does stone-by stone mean? I have even
had kids act it out if they are especially antsy.
·       
What is greenery?  What would it look? I have students close
their eyes and visualize.
·       
I have students close their eyes again and visualize
what the brook would look like now after all the information the speaker has
given us.
·       
What is the purpose of the hyphen?  Why would a pause be important in how it is
read?
·       
What does it mean when the Grandmother says, “It’s
the children who change and go away?”
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     Students go back to their seats and use pencil to draw in the brook as the background of the poem.  I have them use the entire page- even over the words. Students illustrate what they visualize when we read the poem.  I encourage students to use the details that we learned from the poem.  For example we know the color of the brook, the trees around it, there is a school house, the stones across the brook and so on.
Then I pull out the big guns. I give students water color paints and have them paint what they visualize.  Once again, it is a great way too cool sown after a long say of testing and is still academic.

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