Previewing Strategies

According to research, previewing a text can improve comprehension

Informational Hooks

These are activities that teachers design to interest students in the lesson. These activities can include anecdotes, video clips, newspaper headlines, and other attention grabbing media. Below are some questions to assist with:

• What content am I presenting?
• What is the most interesting aspect of that content?
• What anecdotes or personal stories can I tell about the content?
• What video clips related to the content can I play?
• What unusual information about this content can I present?
• What other attention-grabbing media can I use to pique students' interest?

Bell Ringers

Activities at the beginning of class in which students are engaged as soon as the bell rings. The purpose of Bell Ringers are to review content as a way to activate background knowledge before the lesson.

• Quick quiz
• Group quiz
• Discussion question
• Summarization
• Student questions

What do you think you know?

Just as the question implies, an easy way to preview students' knowledge is to ask them a question about the topic. Students are asked individually to write down what they already know about an upcoming topic. Once students have created a list, pair them up and have them discuss their previous knowledge and ideas. The pair will then create a list of the most original or most important knowledge and ideas. Finally, the pair share their lists, and the teacher creates a whole class reproducible.

Overt Linkages

This strategy helps students make overt links between content they have previously studied in class and the new material being presented by overtly explaining connections.

Preview Questions

Asking questions about the upcoming content is a way to pique students' curiosity and activate their prior knowledge. Even though they may not know the answers, this will signal to students what information they should be listening for as the lesson begins.

Preview Question Handout

Brief Teacher Summaries

The teacher provides the students with an oral or written summary of the content that is about to be presented. The summary should contain links between upcoming content and past content. The goal is to help students see key ideas and patterns and follow the ideas as the teachers presents more detailed information. The summaries should contain main ideas or patterns, key details, key terms or phrases and things students need to remember or keep in mind.

Skimming

This strategy requires teachers to help students skim information on an upcoming topic by looking at major section headings and subheadings, then asking them to analyze those headings to pick out main ideas and important concepts in the passage. To assist students with skimming successfully, ask students to record headings, subheadings, topic sentences, and bolded, italicized, or repeated terms and phrases.

Teacher-prepared notes

The teacher provides students an outline (including main ideas, key points, and new vocabulary) of the content. After presenting new information, clarify confusion or misconceptions that students have about the new content.

K-W-L Strategy

This is an "Ole Faithful" strategy where the student provides information in three columns: K which stands for "Know", W for "What you want to know", and finally L for "Learned". This can be conducted whole group, independently, in pairs or small groups.

Advance Organizers

This strategy incorporates visual representation or graphic organizers that show the structure and organization of new content and illustrates how new content connects to information from previous classes. Students can then use this organizer to ask questions before the presentation of new content to identify what they already know about the new content. Below are the different types:

Anticipation Guides

Anticipation Guides are designed to have students respond to a series of statements that relate to upcoming information. After students respond to the statements, the teacher will lead a class discussion about how students responded.

Word Splashes

This strategy is designed to help students preview vocabulary terms and concepts associated with new content. By preparing a number of words and descriptions of those words associated with the new content, the teacher can present this vocabulary to the students. This enables the teacher to share their categories and sorting strategies with the class by leading a discussion on how the terms and concepts relate to each other. (Use Pear Deck Flashcard Factory)

Pre-assessments

A very simple way to pique student interest in the topic is to administer a pre-assessment. The purpose is to expose students to the most important information in an upcoming lesson. This strategy is useful in determining what students know prior to the lesson being given. It is imperative to review the questions after students have identified their answers to minimize their confusion.