Overview
Previewing text before students read helps them learn the material better by
setting a purpose for reading, focusing on the most important information, and
connecting the information in the text to what they already know. In this activity
students will become more familiar with a previewing strategy while reading a
passage on the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León.
The Strategy in Action
Students should complete the following steps to practice the strategy. Be sure
to pass out copies of Activity Guide 1 before students begin their work.
Step 1: Purpose for Reading. Have students answer questions 13 on their
activity guides. You may decide either to set the purpose for reading
yourself, such as to write a paragraph, prepare a presentation, or have
a class discussion, or have students come up with this information on
their own.
Step 2: Important Ideas. Questions 48 ask students to focus on the most
important ideas of the passage. You may want to have students pause
for a few minutes after completing these questions to discuss their
answers and make sure that they are able to identify the main ideas.
Step 3: Connect to What You Know. Have students complete the chart to
discover what they already know about the topic and to help them
generate questions they would like answered in the reading.
Step 4: Read the Text. Now have students read the passage on Juan Ponce
de León.
Step 5: Go Back and Check the Prediction. Have students look back at the
prediction they made about the texts content in question 7. Students
should now be able evaluate their predictions to see how accurate they
were.
Discussion
Once students have finished the activity, you may want to have a brief
discussion with them about the assignment. Encourage students to probe why
they did or did not get close to the texts actual meaning. You may want to ask
students what they think they could do to improve their ability to make
predictions about a texts main ideas before they read.