Anticipation Guides

Learning Intention

We are learning about anticipation guides and how they can be used to help me understand new pieces of information.

Success Criteria

• I can identify the main idea of a text and make connections to related information.

• I ask questions to improve my understanding.

• I can use an anticipation guide.

What is an anticipation guide?

An anticipation guide is a comprehension strategy that is used before reading a book, an article or a textbook to help activate your prior knowledge and build curiosity about a new topic.

Anticipation guides are great because they help you to make predictions, anticipate a text, and verify your predictions. They also encourage you to make a personal connection with a topic or unit of work so that you can integrate new knowledge with your background experience.

Some anticipation guides are True/False, others are set up as Agree/Disagree OR you might be asked to write what you think you know about a series of statements.

Anticipation guides can be used for any subject.

Procedures for using an anticipation guide

1. Your teacher will give you an article, textbook, fiction book to read or will be introducing a new topic.

2. Before you start reading, you will also receive an anticipation guide. The guide will have a series of statement for you to think about - twice!

   1. You respond to the statements BEFORE you read an article, textbook, fiction book or start a topic....these are your predictions.

3. You discuss your predictions with the class.

4. Read the text you have been given or study the topic.

5. Consider your predictions (from the anticipation guide) with what you've learned.

6. Respond to the same statements AFTER you have read an article, textbook, fiction book or finished a topic. You might make a record of anything you've changed your mind about and why.

Teacher guided activity