Making Predictions

I've realized that I haven't shared a lot about what we are doing in reading yet this year.  Just because I haven't shared what we're doing in reading doesn't mean we haven't been doing any!  :)

One of our focuses in reading over these past few weeks has been to make predictions.  We have learned to make predictions before we start reading and while we are reading.  We first learned that a prediction is a good guess about what might happen or what might an answer be.

One of the books that really helped us focus on making predictions was Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey.

During our reading of the book, we made predictions about what might happen next, about how the characters might be feeling, and why the characters might be making the choices they are making.

We realized that there were three things that helped us make predictions.

We can look at the pictures.  We can think of what the words are telling us.  We can use what we already know.  Each time a student makes a prediction, we practice telling how we came up with the prediction.  Was it from the pictures?  Was it from the words in the text?  Do you know something about this already?

We have made predictions while reading so many of our books.  Good readers make predictions while reading every book!  We'll continue to work on making predictions all year.  We're working on finding out if our predictions were correct or not.