Appropriate grades or age groups:
Preschool and Younger
Elementary School
Middle School

Estimated time to complete activity or implement technique:
15 mintues

Materials needed (if applicable):
Any storybook or novel.

Activity set-up/instructions or description of technique:
After reading a book with lots of animated voices and intonation, I ask my children questions about their imagined sounds and temperatures and colors during the story to encourage comprehension and creativity.

Other suggestions or comments:
I enjoy reading stories to my children with different voices portraying the various characters to grasp their attention and to give them understandings of quotation marks and other punctuation. I simulataneously encourage them to develop pictures in their minds about the sequence of events in the story as relating to each character. I watch them now read as young readers on their own with lots of animation in their voices and find they recognize the cadence of their voice naturally following the punctuation. Their own character interpretation becomes part of the story. Their enjoyment increases and their comprehension increases as well.