How to Teach Elementary Kids to Make Predictions
Jan Brett's The Mitten Reading Comprehension Strategy Lesson Plan
Dec 8, 2008
Jan Brett includes a picture clue on every page of her children’s book The Mitten [Putnam, 1989] to help the readers predict what they will find on the next page. These prediction clues can be used by elementary school teachers to introduce the prediction reading comprehension strategy to students.
How to Explain the Prediction Reading Comprehension Strategy
The elementary teacher will show the students the first page of The Mitten and ask the students what the story is about. The teacher will guide the students to answer by using the clue in the mitten. The class will take a picture walk through the story and see that there are mitten clues on every page.
The teacher will tell the class that good readers predict or take an educated guess about what they read before they read it. She will tell them that good readers change their predictions while they are reading when they come across new information.
The teacher will tell the class that they are going to be snow explorers while they read the story and look for clues that will tell them what will happen next. She will ask the students where they can look for the author’s clues and explain to them that previous information from the author and the illustrations are the two biggest clues they can use to make predictions.
How to Model the Prediction Reading Comprehension Strategy
The class will practice using the prediction reading comprehension strategy by making a prediction about what will happen in the story. The teacher will write the prediction on the whiteboard. As the class reads the story the teacher will model how good readers use the predicting strategy to revise and update their predictions.
After the story has been read and discussed, the students will demonstrate their knowledge of the predicting strategy by writing their own short story. Depending on the age and ability level of the students the teacher may have them write and illustrate their own adventure about a mitten or allow them to choose their own topic.
How to Check for Understanding of the Prediction Reading Comprehension Strategy
After the stories have been written during the reading lesson or in a Writer’s Workshop the students will illustrate it. They will put a clue on each page modeling Jan Brett’s story, The Mitten. The class will write their final copies on paper in the shape of a mitten and add a cover page. The stories will be shared with the class and displayed in the classroom.
Prediction lesson plans are a vital part of an elementary teacher’s reading strategy instruction. The prediction reading comprehension strategy helps students make sense of the text by forcing them to engage with what they are reading. The more practice students have making predictions the better readers they will be.
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