This is a great strategy.
I heard about this pre-reading activity several years ago from a language arts teacher and adapted it so I could try it with upper elementary and middle school social studies kids. Probable Passages is a pre-reading strategy that integrates prediction, summarization, vocabulary instruction and story frames.
The strategy asks students to use key concepts, terms and other vocabulary to make predictions about a specific text. Probable Passages can be used with a variety of social studies text types including expository, narrative and persuasive. The goal is not necessarily have correct information the first time but to get a sense of what the text contains and to write (and think) using a style and structure similar to the text.
Using this strategy also provides a powerful incentive to discover whether the text is similar to their own work. When the strategy is introduced for the first time, it is important that…
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