Predict to Increase Comprehension
SCRIP Comprehension Cues
Readers can develop good reading habits by integrating specific cueing strategies into their reading. These cueing strategies serve as a set of tasks to perform while reading to maintain concentration and determine the meaning of text. Students can predict to increase comprehension with both narrative and expository texts.
The author of this article, Mark Pennington, has developed five cueing strategies, using the SCRIP acronym, which work equally well with expository and narrative text. The SCRIP acronym stands for Summarize, Connect, Re-think, Interpret, and Predict.
Both good and struggling readers can practice these cueing strategies to improve comprehension. Despite what many teachers have learned, reading is not a natural process; it needs to be taught, and not just caught. Teaching students to interact with the text. the SCRIP strategies will help them better understand and better remember what they read.
Good readers learn how to carry on an internal dialog while they read. Many readers consider reading to be a passive activity in which the author talks to the attentive listener. Reading research supports the notion that reading should be active with an ongoing dialogue between reader and author. Up to 50% of comprehension is what the reader brings to the text in terms of prior knowledge. Follow this link here to learn how to teach developing readers to carry on this conversation.
Predict to Increase Comprehension
The fifth cueing strategy in the SCRIP comprehension strategies is Predict. Predict means “to think about what they are going to read based on clues from the reading. It is an ongoing process that actively engages the reader in two ways: The reader’s mind is a jump ahead, trying to figure out what is coming next (making new predictions), while at the same time the reader is revising and refining the old predictions” (Guisinger).
Types of Clues that Inform Prediction for Narrative and Expository Text
Text Structure and Genre
Knowing the structure of a story can help readers make informed predictions. With narrative text, knowledge of the elements of plot: basic situation, problem-conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution will inform predictions. With informational/explanatory or argumentative text, knowledge of paragraph structure: topic sentence/claims, evidence/reasons, analysis/commentary and/or counterargument/refutations will help the reader more accurately predict the writer’s train of thought or line of argument.
Vocabulary
Paying close attention to transition words and phrases will help the reader make specific predictions. Transitions signal the development of ideas including the following purposes: definition, example, explanation, analysis, comparison, contrast, cause-effect, conclusion, addition, numerical, sequence.
Literary Devices
Recognizing literary devices such as foreshadowing, tone, and mood can assist the reader in making accurate predictions. The writer’s style gives important clues to what will happen next.
Check out the other SCRIP Comprehension Strategies: summary, connect , re-think, and interpret.
Because teaching the Interpret cueing strategy is the focus of this article, let’s work through a teaching script to teach this Predict cueing strategy.
“Predict means to make an educated guess about what will happen or be said next in the text. A good prediction uses the clues presented in a story, article, or textbook to make a logical guess that makes sense. Good readers check their predictions with what actually happens or is said next.”
“When you reach a part of a story, article, or textbook in which a clue to understanding what will happen next appears, pause to predict what will happen as a result of that clue. Your prediction might be what happens immediately after the clue, later in the reading, or at the end of the reading.”
“Continue to read with your prediction at the back of your mind. If additional, related clues appear, adjust your prediction to reflect these clues. Aim at a specific prediction, not a general one.”
“For example, you would probably not be surprised by a fortune in a fortune cookie which reads ‘Your life will have many ups and downs’ because the prediction is so general and could probably apply to everyone who gets that same fortune. However, if you open a fortune cookie to read ‘Tomorrow at 3:10 p.m. you will get a call from someone you haven’t heard from in a long time’ you would be very interested in checking to see it the prediction comes true because of how specific the fortune reads.”
“Let’s take a look at a fairy tale that many of you will have read or heard about and practice how to make and check on predictions.”
Sam and Friends Phonics Books
Here is a one-page version of “The Three Little Pigs” for you to download, print, and distribute to your students. Have students read, break the reading into sections, and complete the summaries, connections, re-thinks, and interprets in their heads. Direct students to answer the Interpret questions. Share out the student answers. Check out a YouTube video demonstration of the Predict Comprehension Strategy, using “The Three Little Pigs“ fairy tale to illustrate this strategy. The storyteller first reads the fairy tale without comment. Next, the story is read once again as a think-aloud with interruptions to show how readers should predict sections of the reading and check the accuracy of their predictions as they read to monitor and build comprehension.
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