Boy, was I wrong on that one.
As mentioned in a previous post, the primary way that children learn word prediction skills when trying to identify unknown words is by using the picture clues. Children get support from clear illustrations that support the content, and use what they know about the picture to identify story vocabulary that they can then "plug in" to see if it would fit in the sentence. Later, they use their knowledge of beginning or ending letter sounds to verify the prediction they made based on the picture.
I watched this happen with Caroline tonight. She had chosen to read one of her new sight word books from Scholastic, A Book With a Pig. It is a really cute story about a pig that falls out of his storybook on a shelf full of books, and has to find his way home. With repetitive/ patterned sentences like "It was not a book with a glass slipper. It was not a book with a candy house. It was not a book with a troll."; Caroline was able to remember the word 'book,' which was not in her sight word vocabulary. That just left the final word of the sentence, as she knows the words "it," "was," "not," and "with." One page she got stuck on was a depiction of Jack and the Beanstalk, with the sentence reading "It was not a book with a giant." Giant is certainly not in her memory, and with the initial letter 'g' in "giant" making a /j/ sound rather than a /g/ sound, there was no way she was figuring that out on her own. I encouraged her to look at the picture, and tell me what she saw. Her eyes lit up when she made the connection- a giant!
This activity can also be practiced with your emergent readers. Teaching them to pay close attention to the illustrations in a story will prepare them to use those picture clues as comprehension aids. You can use a simple cloze activity while reading aloud as a variation for emergent readers: rather than having them read the story, you read until you come to a word that could be identified based on the picture, and then have the child fill in the blank. For example:
"I looked and I saw him step in on the mat. I looked and I saw him, the _____ in the hat!"
Using the picture clues, it is obvious to the child that a cat is wearing the hat, and therefore, they can plug in the missing word.
Encourage your beginning and emergent readers to use the pictures to their fullest advantage. Better yet, begin asking them questions about the pictures, and encourage your child to take a "picture walk," flipping through the pages and making predictions based on the pictures, before you begin reading. This will activate their background knowledge and assist them in identifying unknown words!
(The following picture has nothing to do with the post. I just think it is funny and since I mentioned the Cat in the Hat, I thought it was worth inserting)
