One way to provide guided practice for making predictions is to give them a three-column prediction list. It will look something like this:
| Your Prediction? |
Clues Used? |
Changes to Prediction? |
| |
|
|
Students can use this to predict what characters will say and do, and what will happen to them. As you can see, there's a column to first write a prediction of what will happen next, then a column for clues (words or phrases from the text) that support that prediction, and lastly, a column for changes to predictions made based on new information read. You can stop readers at certain points to have students share their predictions, the clues from the text or from their prior knowledge that make them predict that, and how their predictions have changed once they've read more.
Let's say some intermediate level middle school students were reading the short story 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' by Ambrose Bierce. They could write their first prediction using the three-column prediction list right after reading the first sentence of the story: 'A man stood upon a railroad bridge in Northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below.'
One student might write in the left column: 'This is going to be about a man who is depressed.' In the middle, she might list the clues: 'man on bridge,' 'looking down into the swift water.' After reading the rest of the first paragraph, she'd realize that this man is tied up with a rope around his neck, thanks to some Federal army soldiers. She might then write in the third column: 'The rope and soldiers made me realize he's probably going to be hung. I predict we'll learn he committed a crime.'
For advanced readers, reading an informational text, such as an article on the dangers of smoking, you can use the three-column prediction list as well. The article's introduction discusses the fact that despite the decline in teens who smoke cigarettes, it is still a big problem in the U.S. today, causing more than 480,000 deaths annually. A student might predict that the article will explain smoking-related illnesses, so she would write that in the first column. Then, in the second column, she would identify clues from the intro that led her to believe that. She would then quote phrases from the text, like 'still a big problem' and '480,000 deaths annually.' Then, after reading more, she would revise her prediction in the third column if necessary. If the article were to actually go on to discuss more about the decline in teen smoking, then she could write, 'facts about teen smoking showed me it's going to focus on that instead.'
