Comprehension strategy - Prediction

A strategy is a plan. When footballers are playing a match they have a strategy in place, they have a plan of action. Good readers have a plan when they read as well.

One of the strategies we have been learning about this is predicting. Predicting is when we think about what might happen next in a story. We use the title, pictures, our prior knowledge and the information the author gives us as clues to make a good guess about what the story might be about or what might happen next. We can make predictions before reading, during our reading and after reading.

If we make predictions about the story we want to find out what is going to happen and check if our predictions were right. We know that our predictions will not always be right and that is okay.

This is our hand signal that we are going to use in school when we have a prediction to make. We can use it at home too when we are reading. We make the letter P with our hands.

This is some of the language we can use when we are making predictions. It would be great if this language can be encouraged at home when we make predictions too. 

Before reading:

I see _________. The story might be about ______________.

The picture makes me think of ______________.

The story might be about _______, because I see _________________.

I see ___________, so the story might be about _________________.

When I saw ________________, I thought of ____________.

During reading:

I predict that _____________________.

I predict ________ will ___________ because ____________________.

                 (who?)              (do what?)                             (why?)

Because ______________, I predict ____ will ___________________.

            (what happened?)                    (who?)                           (do what?)

Since ___________________, I can assume that _________ will

              (what happened?)                                                  (who? or what?)

_______________________.

(do what?)

Checking our predictions:

I predicted that ______________ and that is what happened!

I predicted that _______________, but now I know _______________.

At first I thought __________________, but now I believe __________. 

Our homework this week involves using this strategy while we read and to show our parents how we predict!