Deep Thinking from pictures to text

Teaching inferring can be challenging. I love using graphic novels and picture books for it. Kids will really get into looking closely and studying a picture. They notice things I miss sometimes, from the shading of the light, to a characters eye color being off due to something. If they can notice these details in pictures then we can transfer it to noticing things in the text, from mood, to the different connotations words can have, to inferring, using clues from the text and our own experiences and experiences from others. They think very deeply when looking at pictures but forget to do that when looking a words, sentences and then paragraphs and chapters. Reading is thinking, it does not matter if it is pictures or words. Teaching kids to tap into the pictures and feelings an authors words create is as important as pronouncing them correctly. There has been a lot push from lately for using short pieces of text,  mostly Non Fiction and justifiably so, but we also need to be working on building the stamina of readers to make it through chapter books. To make it through them with the ability to change their thinking and justify why, they have to have the ability to synthesize through longer texts as well.

This is from the book Amulet: Book One: The StoneKeeper by Kazu Kibuishi. My struggling readers love it, and it helps get them to transfer there deep thinking from pictures to the text.