Podcast Transcript
A prediction is something you think will happen in the future. Questions about predictions ask what will probably or most likely happen next. You will not find the answer to these questions in the passage. But there are clues you can use from the passage to make a good guess about what might happen next.
In the previous episode, we focused on the fifth reading strategy – Comparing and Contrasting.
This episode of the CARS & STARS Online podcast is about Making Predictions, which is one of the main reading strategies that underpins CARS & STARS Online.
But what are reading strategies, and why should you know about them?
Learning to read can be a difficult task, but teaching someone to read can be another thing entirely. Learning to decode letters and sound out words are one thing, but neither skill really assists in the most important aspect of reading – that of comprehending what one reads, of being able to understand what something is saying rather than just being able to read it as text.
Understanding text in this way has often been something students have been expected to just pick up on their own – or something that will develop as the ability to decode the text on a literal level does. One reason why this might be the case is because understanding is such a nebulous concept – we can tell students can read something if they can read it to us, but we can only really determine whether they understand it fully with some much more in-depth work.
CARS & STARS Online is a digital reading program designed to turn every student into a proficient and capable reader, with advanced levels of reading comprehension.
The core reading strategies that underpin the entirety of the CARS & STARS Online digital reading comprehension program form an underlying instructional framework that recurs throughout every level and provides consistency of understanding and instruction for students and teachers alike.
The twelve reading strategies progress from simpler, lower-order thinking skills such as Finding the Main Idea and Recalling Facts and Details to more complex, higher-order concepts such as Identifying Author’s Purpose and Summarising. Initial questions determine students’ mastery of the text at a literal level, while later questions build on this understanding to get to the heart of their conceptual understanding. In this way, in every reading passage across every reading level, students are being asked to perform the same essential tasks – with their difficulty and complexity increasing as the student progresses through the reading levels.
These research-proven strategies, taken together, offer a complete recipe for increased student awareness of textual features and concepts, and provide a direct and understandable pathway to improving reading comprehension for each and every student.
And now, onto our main strategy for this episode: Making Predictions!
Making predictions involves taking the information presented in a text and using it to have an informed guess about what might happen next. Clues from the text can be used to determine what is most likely to happen in regard to a specific aspect of the story or information presented, but the student is asked to think beyond the details directly related there.
The answers to questions about making predictions are not found directly in the text, rather the reader is asked to engage with the information and ideas presented there and to concoct their own plausible future based on what they think is most likely to happen.
Making predictions is an important skill for developing readers to master because exercising it correctly requires a detailed understanding of text that goes beyond simply reading what happens and into a more nuanced level of comprehension.
In correctly answering questions about predictions in CARS & STARS Online a student can plausibly and realistically suggest what might happen next given the events depicted. This skill requires them to fully understand a text in order to be able to decide which outcome is most likely based on the information already given in the text itself, but the answers themselves can only be reached when a student has fully mastered what they have read.
Making predictions is a vital skill for readers and an integral part of the twelve reading strategies that make up CARS & STARS Online, because it moves students from skills that involve only interpreting information given in a text to thinking further about the concepts involved and coming to their own decisions about where things might go after it. In this way it is vital in transitioning from lower-order to higher-order thinking, and moving reading comprehension from a more literal interpretation to one involving further thinking and imagination.
Here are some tips for using the strategy of Making Predictions with any text.
Look for clues in the title, details and pictures of the passage.
Ask yourself, “What do I already know about the things I am reading about?”
Use the passage clues and what you already know to help you make a prediction.
Now that we’ve talked about what this strategy is and how it works, let’s have a go at using Making Predictions in a passage ourselves: and answering questions the way students do in CARS & STARS Online!
First, I’ll read the text. This time it’s from an article on the sport of fencing.
Fencing is the sport of duelling with swords. Fencing is fast and athletic. Though sword fighting has been around for thousands of years, fencing became a sport only in modern times. Modern fencers can practise their sport in private clubs, high schools and universities. Some fencers even strive to make an Olympic team.
To be a good fencer, you must be fast and strong. You must be able to think and act quickly. A good fencer is able to stay calm and relaxed in the most difficult times.
In a bout, or individual game, a fencer tries to keep out of range of the opponent’s attack until one fencer breaks the distance and gains the advantage for an attack. A fencer sometimes will make a false attack to see the opponent’s reaction. Seeing how an opponent reacts to a false attack helps the fencer plan the real attack.
What would most likely happen to a fencer who is slow and weak?
She will have an opportunity to perform in the Olympics.
She will successfully avoid attacks.
She will have difficulty mastering the sport.
Or: She will gain the advantage during many attacks.
The correct answer is: She will have difficulty mastering the sport.
This answer is correct because, according to the article, to be a successful fencer one must be fast and strong. One who is slow and weak would have a hard time becoming skilled at the sport.
Now: Predict what a fencer would most likely learn while making a false attack.
Is it:
how effective the opponent is at breaking the distance
how many times a week the opponent practises
how to prepare a strategy to defeat the opponent
or: how serious the opponent is about winning
The correct answer is: how to prepare a strategy to defeat the opponent
This answer is correct because details in the article tell that a fencer sometimes makes a false attack to see the opponent’s reaction. From this you can predict that what the fencer learns could be used to plan an attack to defeat the opponent.
Making Predictions is such an important skill for any reader that the strategy is featured in all eight levels of the main CARS & STARS Online program, A to H.
Research has started to show that flexible learning can improve learning outcomes for all, while allowing teachers to better utilise their time and resources.
Modern education constantly strives for differentiation – to best cater for the needs of every student regardless of differences in skill, prior knowledge, approach or attitude. Differentiation done well allows teachers to leave no child behind while simultaneously holding no child back. It allows every student to reach their full potential, without their full potential getting in the way of anyone else’s.
But what if, sometimes, the forces that are constraining this type of educational breakthrough are the often rigid and inflexible elements of classroom practice? This is where flexible learning comes in. Sometimes what stands in the way of learning something is how we are being taught it, and where. With flexible learning we can differentiate more than just instruction.
CARS & STARS Online is built with the concept of multiple students being in multiple levels of comprehension in every class at any time at its centre. In fact, the program was designed specifically to allow teachers and educators to facilitate classes where each student might be on entirely different reading levels. With CARS & STARS Online, you can have every student in a class working on improving their reading comprehension, in the same program, but at the specific level appropriate to them. CARS & STARS Online is an ongoing program where students progress to the next level when they have proven themselves proficient in one, and where students struggling with understanding a certain level can move down to the level beneath that to hone their skills at the teacher’s discretion. Flexibility is key.
CARS & STARS Online allows every student to work at the level of their own understanding, and every teacher to cater for multiple ability levels within the one class, at the same time. But students can also undertake CARS & STARS Online work from anywhere with an internet connection, on any modern device able to access the internet. Gone are the days where students would have to be chained to their desks with paper and pen, completing the same work at the same time, under the watchful eye of a teacher who will then take away that work and mark it all themselves.
Students using CARS & STARS Online are not bound by attendance or school hours, or anything other than their desire to learn. It’s flexible learning for everyone – teacher and student alike – in terms of both the content and where it can be learned.
If you are interested in learning more about the CARS & STARS Online subscriptions and how they can help children to achieve better results, then sign up for a free trial to be an integral part of your child’s reading success.
If you have missed out our previous episode, please click here. The next episode will be focused on the seventh reading strategy – Finding Word Meaning in Context.
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See you in the next episode, and thanks for listening!
