Contemporary trends in education reflect a shift from traditional teacher-centered approaches to more student-centered approaches to learning. Empowering students in their own learning is facilitated by teaching them effective meaning-making strategies that support active participation in their own learning. Making this happen requires using "double-duty" instructional strategies that are effective instructional tools for teachers and effective learning tools for students when they work independently without continuous monitoring, feedback, and support. These approaches are popular because they are also effective when used across the curriculum in multiple content areas or disciplines (e.g., in both reading and mathematics instruction as well as in science and social studies). Mental imagery is an effective double duty instructional strategy. In this article, the authors describe a specific mental imagery strategy, the Sensory Activation Model (SAM), developed to assist students in constructing their own images as problem-solving tools. The SAM strategy has been demonstrated to aid students in the construction of self-generated images that facilitate both the reading and writing processes. (Contains 2 figures.)