Use a School Readiness Activity to provide early literacy thinking experiences for preschool children that will prepare them to do well in the early grades.
Grades:
Subjects:
Predicting Events in a Book
Purpose/Skills
- To comprehend and respond to books read aloud
- To talk about book characters
- To predict story events and check predictions by hearing the book read aloud
- To respond to questions
- To recall and retell parts of a selection
- To build vocabulary
Children's book
Vocabulary
guess
what
happens
title
Literature Suggestion
Read The Wolf's Chicken Stew by Keiko Kasza, or another appealing book with a strong plot line to help children make predictions.
Warm-Up
Hold up the cover of a book children are familiar with. Invite a volunteer to tell what the book is about. Ask them to tell how the cover could help them guess what the book was about--even if they had never read it. Encourage them to tell all about the clues they could get from the cover.
Procedure
- Introduce the new book title and display the cover. Ask children to guess what the book
- is about.
- Read the book aloud. Stop before you turn the pages, and ask children to predict what they think will happen next. Examples: What do you think (the wolf) will do? What do you think will happen next? Where do you think he is going now?
- Discuss any surprises in the book.
Encourage children to make predictions during the reading of other books and daily activities. For example, they can predict what activity they will do next, or what will be served for lunch.
Observation Assessment
- Proficient - Child looks carefully at the pages and makes reasonable guesses about story events.
- In Process - Child listens fairly attentively to the story and shows understanding by actions, such as laughing or pointing, but needs prompting to name or describe characters.
- Not Yet Ready - Child looks at the pages, makes comments about the pictures, but doesn't use the clues there to predict events.
