Miss Frizzle, you're right. The lesson I did was actually from Debbie Miller's book on teaching mental images. What I did was re-create a graphic organizer that was shown in her book to fit the book The Napping House. It was like a separated in half and on the left side it said "My mental image..." and on the right side it said "My mental image now...". I did not show the illustrations as I read the book. As I read the book, I had them "make a movie in their minds" and I stopped of course to do think alouds. In the middle of the book I had them create their mental image in their minds, create a snapshot then illustrate their mental image on the left side. I had them "turn & talk" about their mental images to compare them with their partners then I kept reading. At the end of the book, the setting changes and the night turns to day. I had the students illustrate their mental images now, and they compared them with their partners. I wanted to see if they could visualize how the scene changed from night to day and how everyone is waking up in the napping house. It was funny because as we went through the illustrations in the book in the end to see if our mental images were accurate, some of the kids' illustrations showed exactly how the illustrations were in the book! It was alot of fun and they got it.

The main concept is to teach them to "make a movie in their minds" as they are reading because some chapter books they may come across will not have picture support so they will have to keep up with what's happening. Does the setting change?? Does the scene change?? Are the characters changing?? etc.

__________________"When I see children, I see the face of God. That's why I love them so much. That's what I see." ~ Michael Jackson

Oh Yes!! Teaching visualization or mental images isn't something you can just teach in one minilesson and then hand them over a graphic organizer and say, now sketch it. It would never work. Luckily my school uses the Lucy Calkins Columbia Teacher's College Reading & Writing Project so our kids are exposed to and have worked with mental images since 1st grade and we really get into it in 2nd. I didn't do this lesson until we've had minilesson after minilesson on how to make a movie in our minds. You have to teach them how to visualize when the characters change, when the setting changes, when the scene changes etc. There's alot to it. But the book helped to put the icing on the cake!!
By the way the book is Reading With Meaning.

__________________"When I see children, I see the face of God. That's why I love them so much. That's what I see." ~ Michael Jackson

Try reading the words of a picture book 3 times. Have them close their eyes. Then give time a 1 minute quick sketch in their reading journal (or white paper). Then show them the illustrator's picture and discuss. Repeat.

It's a good time to point out how our "schema" is different and everyone's visualization is correct if it is similar. You can also bring up connections... "this reminds me of...."

When they begin books with little illustrations, this will help them comprehend and interpret author's words.

Great ideas!!! Another thing I do is to have the children sketch their own picture and then talk to a buddy about what they decided to include in their picture. I then have the kids listen to the passage again and draw a new picture based on their conversation with their buddy. It was sooo cool to see how their images changed based on the schema of their buddy.