Activating Prior
Knowledge and Interest
Chapter 6
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Frame of Mind
 Why do prereading strategies that activate
prior knowledge and raise interest in the
subject prepare students to approach text
reading in a critical frame of mind?
 How can meaningful learning be achieved
with content area reading?
 What are the relationships among curiosity
arousal, conceptual conflict, and motivation?
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2011
Frame of Mind
 How and why does a prediction strategy such
as use of an anticipation guide facilitate
reading comprehension?
 What is the value of student-generated
questions, and how might teachers help
students ask questions as they read?
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2011
Key Terms
 Active comprehension
 Prediction strategy
 Anticipation guides
 PreP
 Expectation outlines
 ReQuest
 Guided imagery
 Self-efficacy
 IEPC
 Story impressions
 Metacognitive
 Student-generated
awareness
 Motivation
questions
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Motivation to Read
Typically, by the time they enter middle
school, students’ motivation to read often
declines.
What can teachers do to address this
decline?
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Motivation to Read
 Make connections between the text and
students’ own lives.
 Help students to understand that they are
capable of generating credible responses.
 Pay attention to students’ curiosity and
imagination.
 Understand students’ backgrounds, prior
knowledge, and interests.
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2011
Assessing Students’ Prior Knowledge:
PreP Strategy
 Initial associations with the concept: “Tell me
anything that comes to mind when…”
 Reflections on initial associations: “What
made you think of…[the response given by a
student]?”
 Reformulation of knowledge: “Based on our
discussion and before we read the text,
have you any new ideas about…?”
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2011
Arousing Curiosity:
Creating Story Impressions
 Introduce the strategy.
 Use large newsprint, a transparency, or a
chalkboard to show students the story chain.
 Read the clues together, and explain how
the arrows link one clue to another in a
logical order.
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2011
Arousing Curiosity:
Creating Story Impressions
 Demonstrate how to write a story.
 Invite the students to read the actual story
silently, or initiate a shared reading
experience.
 For subsequent stories, use story
impressions to have students write individual
story predictions.
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Establishing Problematic Perspectives:
Guided Imagery
 Building an experience base for inquiry,
discussion, and group work
 Exploring and stretching concepts
 Solving and clarifying problems
 Exploring history and the future
 Exploring other lands and worlds
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Making Predictions:
Anticipation Guides
 Analyze the material to be read. Determine
the major ideas, both implicit and explicit.
 Write those ideas in short, clear, declarative
statements.
 Put these statements in a format that will
elicit anticipation and prediction.
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Making Predictions:
Anticipation Guides
 Discuss the students’ predictions and
anticipations before they read the text
selection.
 Assign the text selection.
 Contrast the readers’ predictions with the
author’s intended meaning.
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Making Predictions:
IEPC

Select a text passage that contains content
appropriate for developing imagery.

Have students imagine a scene for the text they are
going to read.

Once they’ve heard initial responses from their
classmates, have students elaborate on their initial
visualizations.
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2011
Making Predictions:
IEPC
 Have students use their initial and
elaborated images to make predictions
about what they are going to read.
 During and after reading, encourage
students to confirm or modify their
predictions based upon their reading of the
text.
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Question Generation:
ReQuest
 Both the students and the teacher silently
read the same segment of the text.
 The teacher closes the book and is
questioned about the passage by the
students.
 Next, there is an exchange of roles.
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Question Generation:
ReQuest




On completion of the student-teacher exchange, the
class and the teacher read the next segment of the
text. Steps 2 and 3 are repeated.
Students stop questioning and begin predicting.
Students are then assigned the remaining portion of
the selection to read silently.
The teacher facilitates a follow-up discussion of the
material.
Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2011