Teaching Students to Predict while Reading

A key critical reading skill for students reading fiction is to learn how to use information to predict what will happen next in the story.When readers don’t predict, they can lose interest in the story and are more likely to put the book down. So how do teachers teach students to predict?

Authors leave a trail of breadcrumbs for readers to follow.This trail keeps readers reading to find out what happens next.Predictions are a form of inference and higher level thinking and students need practice in making and supporting their predictions.

To teach students what to look for when forming a prediction, teachers can use pictures.Show students a picture and have them predict what will happen next.Then have them write what clues in the picture helped them come to that prediction. (See the photos at the right for suggestions of the types of photos I use.)

Foreshadowing is the literary device that authors use to hint at what is coming next in the plot of a novel.Struggling readers don’t recognize these clues at first and find it difficult to make predictions.As a teacher, model…model…model for your students.Start small using short stories that you are reading together as a class.As you are reading with your students, point out places that you stop and predict.Tell them what clues you see in the story that help you form those predictions.

I do a little foreshadowing hand motion every time we encounter foreshadowing as we are reading. After a few months, students get excited and do the hand motions themselves. It helps students to have a motion to go with an abstract concept. My motion is a like flashing hands in a circle. Come up with your own to help your students connect to what they are reading and the new skills they are mastering.

While students are reading, have them keep track of their predictions.As they continue to read, have them refer back to this list to check that their predictions were correct or to alter their predictions in light of new evidence.

But just making predictions isn’t enough.Students need to see two things:

1. What evidence in the text supports that prediction?

2. Keep reading, does the prediction come true or are there new clues to make youchange your prediction?

For helping students locate evidence in the text that supports their predictions I ask them to “BET me!”BET stands for “Base it on Evidence in the Text.”I tell them that it’s okay to predict that space aliens are going to come and take over the planet if they can find three things to support that in the text.If not, then I ask them to think about the clues and give me another BET.

I approach predictions with my classes like a detective trying to solve a crime.At the beginning the clues may point to a specific suspect.As the investigation moves forward, the evidence either supports the detective’s theory or points the detective in a new direction.

Predictions work in much the same way.As students read, they make guesses as to what’s going to happen.If they keep track of these guesses along with their BET evidence, they can refer back to those as they read.It’s so cool when a kid says, “See! I was right!Joey was the one who played the trick on Tina!”

When we read whole class stories or novels, we keep track of our predictions and BET evidence on a poster or overhead and constantly refer to it as we read.This can be done during class discussion.Or I do this either as part of our opening journal activity at the beginning of class or as a closing activity as a way to reflect on what we’ve read.

When students are surprised at what happens in a book, have them use 20/20 hindsight and go back and look for the clues the author left to foreshadow the events.This will help students recognize the clues they missed.Good authors will give readers surprises.It’s not a bad thing to have an “I didn’t see THAT coming” moment.But help students understand the clues that the author left.This helps them hone their predicting skills.

Really, most novels can be used to help students hone their prediction skills, but the following is a list of books with twist endings or “I didn’t see THAT coming!” moments. Books with * are ones that I have previously used as whole class novels with a focus on making predictions.

Middle Grade Novels (4-6):

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson*

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Middle School:

The Giver by Lois Lowery*

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech*

Holes by Louis Sachar

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

High School:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Monster by Walter Dean Meyers

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Classics:

Emma by Jane Austen

Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald*