Anticipation Guides: Guide Your Readers to Greatness!

The reading strategy of “Anticipation Guides” is a comprehensive strategy that provides statements before students reading to get the children thinking about what they may be reading about, activating prior knowledge, and encourages the students to build curiosity about the new subject matter. Teachers prepare a list of statements, the students must than decided if they agree with the statement, or disagree with it. Students then move on to the reading. After the reading, students are given the list of statements again, and they can then decide to stick with their original statement answer or they can choose to agree or disagree with it. It is common that students change their opinions on some of the statements after the reading, and they often realize they have refined their understanding of the subject through this activity. This reading strategy is beneficial because it allows for students to use prior knowledge to relate to the text, and it also can be a lesson taught to encourage discussion based off of more complex issues.