Using Read Alouds to Practice Word Prediction for Beginning Readers

 Disclaimer: DO NOT STOP READING YOUR CHILD QUALITY STORYBOOKS AS A RESULT OF THIS POST!!! Now that we have that out of the way, let me explain why it is important for your child to practice reading some of the rather boring books as well....

While it is extremely important to expose your child to high-quality children's literature selections with interesting vocabulary, entertaining characters, exciting plots, and varied sentence structure, it is also important to allow your beginning readers to begin attempting to "read" some easier books on their own. Sure, Skippyjon Jones and Fancy Nancy books make fantastic read-alouds during storytime, but could you imagine trying to tackle either of those series when your sight word bank hovers in between ten and twenty high frequency words most commonly used in sentences limited to the vocabulary in Schoolhouse Rock's "Conjunction Junction" song? (you remember: "and", "but", and "or").

Beginning readers need practice using what we teachers like to call "text supports" to identify unknown words. Beginning reader books by Dr. Seuss, P.D. Eastman, and Stan and Jan Bernstain may not have the most exciting plot lines on the planet, but their use of patterned, repetitive, or rhymed sentences and vivid illustrations that specifically support the main idea of each page allow young readers to achieve general success when experimenting with word prediction. 

Tonight, Caroline, Camden and I enjoyed reading Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham. Camden looked at the pictures and babbled, Caroline read all of the sight words she knew, and I read the words in between. A couple of pages into the book, I recognized the AABB rhyme pattern:

Would you like them in a box?

Would you like them in a fox?  

Recognizing that the rhyming pattern coupled with the illustration would provide Caroline the support she needed to attempt word prediction, I began reading the first line of the rhyme, then having Caroline fill in the blank on the second:

Would you eat them in a car?

Eat them, eat them, here they ______. 

This allowed Caroline to use her knowledge of rhyming words in addition to the illustrations in order to try to predict the unknown words (although this is a bad example, as "are" is one of her known sight words so she could simply read it rather than have to predict, but you get the picture.)  

Similar practice can take with non-rhyming books as well, like P.D. Eastman's Are You My Mother? Using the picture clues and repetitive sentence structure, your child can predict words in each sentence:

"Are you my mother?" the baby bird asked a _________. 

"Are you my mother?" The baby bird asked a _________. 

The illustrations on each page allow your child to correctly predict the word to fill in the blank.  

Scholastic's Sight Word Readers are also great resources to allow your child to predict words, as the only words in the book that are not familiar sight words are supported by vivid illustrations and a repeating sentence structure! 

I challenge you- sometime this week, try using this strategy to allow your child to practice word prediction! Email me or leave a comment with suggestions for good books, I would love to post them for other followers!