While reading chapter 8 of Literacy for the 21st Century, I found myself particularly interested in the various comprehension strategies, but "prediction" particularly caught my eye because it's something that I actually make use of in my own teaching experiences. I work with children who are still too young to begin reading, but they have a great deal of fun trying to figure out, based on the pictures in the book and the questions that I ask them, what will happen next.
There are a number of children's picture books that are, in a lot of ways, designed for this step. For some books, the colorful pictures on the pages give a very accurate idea of what is happening on those pages and this helps students start to make connections between the pictures and words on the pages. If you see a fire engine on one page, there is a decent bet that the word also appears somewhere on that page, if not in a few places on the page. Attempts at prediction can even be made before opening the book as the title and the cover often also give important information.
Picture books are hardly the only way to do this as it can be done with chapter books that the students are reading based on what they know of the book and the parts that they've already read as well. According to Steve Peha (2003) in his online article "What Can You Say About a Book?", it also helps developing readers figure what information is important. In general, the process seems to be beneficial and it's one that can start to be taught at a young age. Even if the students in question are not yet ready to learn to read, it is probably still worthwhile to try to make use of this strategy, partly because it will help prepare them for when they begin to learn to read and partly because it is often engaging for the children, whic makes the experience more fun the simply sitting and listening. Making the experience as fun and pleasant as possible will hopefully cause the students to be more willing to persevere when it comes time to learn to read.
Of course, while I focused on prediction here, there are a number of strategies to help with comprehension and ideally they should all be used while a student is learning to read.
This site has more information on comprehension strategies in general, with prediction being included on the list.
I really enjoyed your post on prediction. It’s important for students to be able to guess what will happen next or what the story is going to be about. One thing that I like to do with my class is go through a picture walk of the book without reading it beforehand. This way the students are able to look at the pictures and discuss as a class about what they see and what they think will happen next. After we go through the whole book we read the story aloud and we can see how accurate the students predictions were. Another activity the students really enjoy is talking about what the characters might do after the story ends. This allows them to be creative in their thinking and the great thing is, there is no wrong answer.
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ReplyDeletePrediction is a very interesting strategy used to measure comprehension. Last year when I administered the QRI-4, the assessment began with asking students a few concept questions such as "How do people feel about mice? How does an old house for sale mean to you? and What does a mouse inside a house mean to you." After answering these three question, students make prediction on what the story is about. I've found the stories they made very fascinating. Using the key terms such as mouse,house, and sale, they constructed a story that is filled with the information given and with an ending that is opened-ended for them to create. These key terms in a way tap on their prior knowledge before drawing their attention to the story.
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