Science texts are often “multimodal,” meaning that in addition to words, they incorporate other modes of communication such as images, charts, diagrams, and symbols. You can help students deal with the different modes in a science text by guiding them through a “picture walk” of a text before they read it. Ask students to describe each picture, chart, or diagram. Press students to give more information and build on each other’s observations. Finally, ask students to predict, based on the images, etc., what they think the text will be about.