What is predicting in reading?
Making predictions is a strategy that students learn to use information from a text to anticipate what they are about to read. For example, in grade 1 students are given simple texts to read and asked to circle the picture that depicts what happens next:
Why is predicting a text important?
Learning to predict what happens next in a story is an important element in helping kids improve their reading comprehension. Why, you ask? Students who are able to make predictions about a story, based on what they have already read, are also able to become actively involved in the reading process.
In making predictions, students use critical thinking and problem solving skills. In reflecting and evaluating the text, students extract deeper meaning of the text and, therefore, improve their comprehension skills.
Students will find that when they use prediction they are more engaged with the story, finding that they connect their knowledge of what they have read to new information they are learning.
Students may find learning to make predictions easier with a fiction story, as much of their earlier reading comprehension work has been in reading fictional stories. They are simply more comfortable with the structure of a narrative text, than they are with the structure of an informational text.
Therefore, we have created narrative prediction worksheets, to help your kids practice this important skill. You will find students revisit this topic every year from grade 1 to grade 5, starting gently with using pictures and titles to predict stories, to more complex stories in the later grades.
Grade 1 prediction work
In grade 1, students work on using text and pictures, as well as titles and pictures to predict stories.
Grade 2 prediction worksheets
Students in grade 2 are given the title of a book and asked to select the corresponding picture in using their prediction skills.
Grade 3 prediction practice
In the later grades, students tackle texts to predict what happens next.
Grade 4 prediction worksheet
Grade 4 students are given short story events where they need to make predictions.
Grade 5 prediction practice
Grade 5 students are provided with a short text followed by questions asking them to predict what will happen next.
