Practice Visualizing from Text

Read and think about each of the samples below. Then record in your notebook the pictures that come into your mind based on the words you read.

The ocean’s water is moving constantly, pushed by prevailing winds. The winds create ocean currents; that is, water moving in one direction. Ocean currents flow in circular patterns. In the northern hemisphere, currents move in a clockwise direction, and in the southern hemisphere, they move in a counter-clockwise direction.

The temperature of a current depends on where it comes from. Warm currents originate in the tropics and bring warm water into cooler regions. Cold currents originate in the polar regions and bring cool water toward the equator.

Excerpted from: Draper et al. Physical Geography: Discovering Global Systems and Patterns, (Toronto: Gage, 2000).

Before contact [with Europeans], there were 53 Aboriginal languages spoken across the Canadian land mass. Some speakers were so different from one another that they could be compared to Europeans trying to understand Tibetan or Japanese.

The geographical diversity of Canada added to these differences. West Coast Indians, such as the Haida, fished for salmon, hunted sea mammals, and even owned slaves. Plains Indians were nomadic, hunting bison or buffalo. Eastern woodland Indians combined agriculture and hunting.

Excerpted from: Jennifer Watt et al., Civics Today (Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 2000), p. 90.

The source of all energy for ecosystems is the Sun. It lights and warms the surface of our planet. It gives the energy needed to evaporate water from the oceans and lakes, to form rain and snow. Sunlight also provides the energy used by green plants to make the compounds that maintain their lives and serve as food for all other organisms.

The Sun acts like a distant nuclear fusion reactor, radiating energy out into space. Of the energy released by the Sun, only about one-billionth reaches Earth – after a journey of about 150 million kilometres. Much of the energy that reaches Earth’s atmosphere is filtered out before it reaches the surface.

Excerpted from: Ritter et al;Science 10 (Toronto: Nelson Thomson Learning, 2001), p. 32.

Visualizing-Student Sample Responses

Lumbering became a way of life for many in the pioneer communities. The season began in the fall. Canoes car- ried the loggers and their supplies to the camps in the forests. Thousands went to live in the shanties of the lum- ber camps as the timber trade grew in importance.

I can picture early settlements of houses among many trees. The leaves on the trees are orange, red, and yellow because it is fall. I can see the loggers with big bundles of sup- plies in long, wide canoes on a river.

The axemen carefully selected the trees they would cut. The best white pine might tower 50 m. high. Considerable skill was needed to bring these trees down safely. A good axeman could drop a tree on a precise spot. His skill and power were essential to the profit of the camp.

I’m having a hard time imagining how high a 50 m. pine tree would be. I think of my own height and multiply until I reach 50. Or I com- pare the height to the height of a room or a building. In my mind, the axeman is a big, muscular guy because the text talks about his power.

Once the logs were felled, they were squared to fit more easily into the tim- ber ships. Rounded edges wasted im- portant space. Squaring was done with an adze and a heavy broad-axe which could weigh as much as 4 kg. Actually, squaring timber was very wasteful. About a quarter of the log was cut away and left on the ground. In winter the logs were hauled out of the woods with teams of oxen.

I can see the loggers working with axes to chop off the round edges of the trees. I don’t know what an “adze” but I imagine it is a special tool with a sharp blade for trimming logs.

I can see all that wasted wood on the ground, but at least it would decompose and be recy- cled into the soil as a nutrient.