Our Latest Edutopia Post: Brain Movies

The images in your mind can be more exciting and memorable than any Hollywood film! That's the theme of the latest blog post that I co-authored with Donna Wilson on the Edutopia website, "Brain Movies: When Readers Can Picture It, They Understand It."

In this post, we share with teachers the importance of guiding your students to visualize as they read, which makes for an engaging and enjoyable way to boost comprehension and retention.

Here is an excerpt from the post:

"Learning to create brain movies can help students make sense of complex nonfiction subject matter and 'see' the characters, setting, and action in stories. Teachers who use our strategy tell us their students seem to have more fun—and success—as they read. These anecdotes are supported by research showing that students who are taught to develop mental imagery of text do better than control groups on tests of comprehension and recall."


In the post, we site specific research that supports the usefulness of transforming text into mental images. We also describe how to help students in the process of turning text into brain movies and provide examples of brain movies in action.

Read the entire article at Edutopia. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment at the bottom of the post. We also would appreciate you sharing the article with others on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media.