Visualizing the Possibilities

One of the suggestions in the book I currently can't take out of my hands (Talking, Drawing, Writing by Giacobbe and Horn) was to take the idea of verbal storytelling to visualization. When students in kindergarten tell a story it doesn't always sound like a story, but rather a list. What I have been trying to demonstrate to students is that their stories are really stories, to be heard and told. To make this more clear I am holding up a blank book and talking through their story as a model. For instance, as I have a student talk through her list for the class, I re-phrase it in story language while pointing to a blank page in a book--as if the words are there. Then we talk about what the illustrations might look like and where they might go. We even go as far as titling the story and giving it a title page, but nothing is actually written down, just visualized. I love this idea as a tool for planning and processing through a story.