Making Connections Through Predictions in Informational Text

In Karen Feathers' book Infotext: Reading and Learning, she discusses predicting as a way to make connections and to set a purpose for reading informational text.   Making predictions is a type of inference, so it is important to explain to students that they combine what they already know with what they read or see in the text to make a prediction.  Therefore, the first step is for the student to read the title and see the cover.  The first couples times you do this with students, you may want to scaffold by having them also go through the text and read subheadings, look at pictures, and read captions.  Then you simply ask the student what information do they think they will learn in this text and make a chart of their predictions because once again, this sets the students' purposes for reading.

Feathers cautions against going back to see who made right and wrong predictions.  It is not about whether the predictions are correct.  What is important is, did they use the knowledge of the text and types of text and connect that knowledge with what they already knew to make reasonable predictions?  Feathers encourages students to keep their own list of predictions, so they can check those that are confirmed, cross off those that are not in the text, and to continue writing predictions as they read and come to new subheadings. You also may want the students to meet in groups or in pairs after they read, to compare predictions that they made and information that they learned. After the text has been read, then the class can come together again and goes back through the chart to discuss how their predictions were confirmed or changed as they read the text.