Noting the National Reading Panel's suggestions on assessing and improving children's phonemic awareness, this paper discusses how reading can be improved through think-alouds and visualizations. Comprehension strategies that teachers can model during think-alouds are: activating prior knowledge; building vocabulary; determining importance; questioning and clarifying; inferring; and synthesizing. Proficient readers create images in their minds as they read, and teachers can guide young readers to do the same. To help students visualize as they read, a teacher can start with simple sentences and ask students questions that help create images. Guiding students with detailed questions that lead to open-ended answers helps them create a visual interpretation of the sentence. This activity not only encourages students to create imagery, but also encourages them to think about questioning and become question askers themselves. (PM)