Teaching Students How to Make Predictions

The Role of Predictions in Language Arts Lessons

Dec 16, 2008

Motivating students to read may be as simple as providing them a purpose for reading, something that making predictions will accomplish.

Having your students make predictions before reading a book is not just a fun thing to do. It can be a real educational opportunity as well. As long as a student has not yet read a book, he can make a prediction about the story. Then, while reading the story, the student will work on critical thinking skills, and comprehension in order to find out if his prediction was correct.

Why Make a Prediction

Making predictions before reading a book provides the student up with a reason to read the story. This will motivate the student to read the book. Students with a reason to read will also comprehend the story better, as they are looking for information that will verify or contradict their prediction. Students who make predictions will often stop mid sentence and shout "I knew it!" or "oh man!" as they find out whether their prediction was true or not.

How to Make a Prediction

Incorporate predictions into pre-reading activities for each book. A great example of how to do this is in the lesson for Stone Soup by Ann McGovern [Scholastic Inc, 1986]. For younger students, creating something for them to write their prediction on will help emphasize the importance of making a good prediction. Teach students how to predict what will happen in a story by looking at the front of the book, and discuss the title and picture. These both give hints as to what will happen in the story.

Another option for making a prediction, is to have the students do a picture walk through the book to find out what they can from the pictures. This activity does not involve any reading, so try to prevent students from reading anything yet. Once the student has looked through the book and gleaned what information he could from the pictures, guide him to make an informed prediction about the story.

Making Good Predictions

Teach students to make good predictions instead of just saying anything to satisfy the requirement. A good prediction uses the clues in the title, front page picture and illustrations inside the book to make a guess about what the book is about. Saying that the book is about a boy or about an animal is not an acceptable prediction. Having your students include a character and an action or main event in their prediction is a good way to improve their sleuthing skills.

Teaching students to make predictions and using this skill before reading a book will not only give students a purpose for reading, but will help improve their comprehension of the text. This will help to motivate the students to read.

The copyright of the article Teaching Students How to Make Predictions in Lesson Plan Help is owned by Jennifer Wagaman. Permission to republish Teaching Students How to Make Predictions in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.