Pima County Public Library Shares Strategy #4 For Successful Reading: Prediction

Press release from the Pima County Public Library :

September 30, 2020

This post is part of a blog series: 9 Strategies for Successful Reading

Your child is reading a book for school and when you ask about the book, they can’t tell you what is going on. They have no idea what the book is about. Or else they remember some unimportant details, but not the big picture. Many kids can read the words of a book (decoding the language) and still struggle to understand what they are reading.

In this third installment of our 9 Strategies for Successful Reading, we’ll use a strategy that can help your child understand their reading. It’s also something that should not be too painful!

If you haven’t read the beginning of the series, please read Strategy #1: Prepare, Strategy #2: Making Connections and Background Knowledge, and Strategy #3: Asking Questions.

Have you ever watched a movie or TV show with your kids and had them tell you at the end, “I knew that was going to happen!” Whether we’re watching a mystery whodunit or a thrilling epic fantasy, who doesn’t like to figure out what will happen before it is revealed? It makes watching or reading fun! But, did you know that this kind of thinking is also a very helpful strategy for reading comprehension? It’s called Prediction.

Strategy #4: Prediction

If you’ve read the previous blogs, you’ll know that one of the strategies is for your child to ask questions about the text. The next natural step is for them to answer their own questions and to make predictions about what will happen next.

Predicting starts from the time they read the title and see the cover of the book! If your child picks up a book called Sofia Martinez: My Fantastica Family, they might predict that the story will focus on family, and, from the smile on Sofia’s face, that the story will have a happy ending.

My Fantástica Family

On the other hand, if your child picks up Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, they will predict that the book will have many scary stories. They will expect scary things to happen. They might even predict they’ll be frightened if they read the stories.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Scary stories are a good example of how we predict. We do it all the time with scary stories, like predicting where the monster will turn up to scare us!

If your child reads about a character who is walking through a cemetery, they might predict an encounter with some kind of supernatural creature like a ghost, vampire, or ghoul. They might predict that a mist will come out of nowhere.

Predictions are also based on your child’s background knowledge. We covered that in the blog on Strategy #2: Making Connections/Background Knowledge. If your child has seen scary movies before, then they will know that ghosts, vampires, or ghouls often show up in stories that have cemeteries.

As you can see, the strategies all work together to help comprehension. Asking questions, relating what they are reading to what they already know, and predicting what will happen next, all combine to become powerful strategies to propel your child’s reading forward. When kids are engaged in what they are reading, they remember it and they understand it.

Plus, once your child gets the hang of predicting and starts making predictions that are correct, it boosts their confidence in reading!

This press release was produced by the Pima County Public Library. The views expressed here are the author’s own.