Forty Best-practices Instructional Activities

Anticipation Guide
   

Background: An anticipation guide is a pre-reading activity. The guide contains a series of true/false statements, fill-in-the blank sentences, and/or focus questions that preview an upcoming text.

Pre-Reading Strategies: Activate Prior Knowledge, Build Vocabulary, Set a Purpose for Reading, Make Predictions, Ask Questions, Identify Main Ideas and Details

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40 Best-practices
Instructional Activities
   

Procedure: Preview a selection for main ideas, essential details, vocabulary words, and themes. Create an anticipation guide by writing true/false statements, fill-in-the-blank sentences, and/or essential questions. Have students read and respond to the statements and questions prior to reading the selection. Revisit the anticipation guide after reading to confirm or revise predictions, answer questions, clarify ideas, and assess understanding.

Variations:

  1. Create an anticipation guide that simply lists key words and phrases for an upcoming topic or reading selection. Have students predict how the words are related.
  2. Use the text-only version of a JN monarch slideshow to create a pre-reading fill-in-the-blank handout for students.
  3. Use a concept map as an anticipation guide. Include the main ideas or themes of the selection as headings for the concept map. Students write background knowledge details and pre-reading predictions and questions on the map. During and after reading, students add details from the text to the concept map.
  4. Include photographs, illustrations, maps, charts, or other visual presentations on an anticipation guide. Students use details in the visual presentations to make predictions and ask questions.

Example: An anticipation guide for a reading selection that describes concepts about the monarch's migratory route could include true/false statements and questions about pathways, timelines, risks/dangers, and breeding/overwintering grounds.

Sample:

The Missing Word Challenge is an anticipation guide that uses fill-in-the-blank sentences to preview the slideshow, "Spring Migration: A Race Against Time."

 

A-Z Pre-Reading Chart

Missing Word Challenge