Build Students’ Reading Comprehension Using Open-Mind Portraits

Open-Mind Portraits have an instructional focus on comprehension and are best used for Grade levels 3-5 and 6-8. It is a reading strategy used to build students reflection and analytical skills. This strategy requires students to deeply analyze the story’s events and characters by drawing an open-mind portrait of the character without seeing an image of them first. Open-mind portraits have two parts; the first is to draw the characters face on one page and the second is to draw several thinking pages that show the characters traits, thoughts and plot. Students use their comprehension skills to visualize the character and determine their characters attributes from the text in their own way. Open-mind portraits are an essential way to build students comprehension skills and promote engagement with the text through the analyzation and visualization of characters.