Anticipation Guide

An Anticipation Guide is a before reading strategy used to start students thinking about what they know (or think they know) about a topic. The teacher develops the Anticipation Guide by creating 5-10 statements about the content students will be exploring. Students read each statement and Agree or Disagree with it. They do not have to share their answers, but they have to put an answer for each statement. After they have agreed or disagreed with each statement, students are to read the related text, and they can change or revise their answers if they learn something new. The Anticipation Guide may be used as an assessment for learning, but should not be used for a grade.

Sample Anticipation Guide for Social Studies

Sample Anticipation Guide for Literature

Anticipation Guide for Hunger Games

Anticipation Guide To Kill a Mockingbird

Description of Anticipation Guides

An anticipation guide consists of a list of statements that are related to the topic of the text your students will be reading. While some of the statements may be clearly true or false, a good anticipation guide includes statements that provoke disagreement and challenge students’ beliefs about the topic. Before reading the text, students indicate for each statement whether they agree or disagree with it.

Purpose for Using Anticipation Guides

Anticipation guides serve two primary purposes:

Elicit students’ prior knowledge of the topic of the text.

Set a purpose for reading. (Students read to gather evidence that will either confirm their initial beliefs or cause them to rethink those beliefs.)

Guided Comprehension: Previewing Using an Anticipation Guide

How to Use Anticipation Guides

Choose a text. (This strategy works well with most expository texts. It works particularly well with texts that present ideas that are somewhat controversial to the readers.)

Write several statements that focus on the topic of the text. Next to each statement, provide a place for students to indicate whether they agree or disagree with the statements.

Tips for writing statements:

Write statements that focus on the information in the text that you want your students to think about.

Write statements that students can react to without having read the text.

Write statements for which information can be identified in the text that supports and/or opposes each statement.

Write statements that challenge students’ beliefs (Duffelmeyer, 1994).

Write statements that are general rather than specific (Duffelmeyer, 1994).

Duffelmeyer, F. (1994). Effective Anticipation Guide statements for learning from expository prose. Journal of Reading, 37, 452-455

Have students complete the anticipation guide before reading. The guide can be completed by students individually, or in small groups. Remind students that they should be prepared to discuss their reactions to the statements on the anticipation guide after they have completed it.

Have a class discussion before reading. Encourage students who have differing viewpoints to debate and defend their positions.

Have students read the text. Encourage students to write down ideas from the text that either support their initial reaction to each statement, or cause them to rethink those reactions.

Have a class discussion after reading. Ask students if any of them changed their minds about their positions on each statement. Ask them to explain why. Encourage them to use information from the text to support their positions.

Anticipation Guide