Prevoke: Vocabulary, Prediction and Word Study Game

If you want a fun strategy that incorporates all of the above, this is the one for you.  Timothy Rasinski describes how to use it in his book Essential Strategies for Word Study (Rasinski, Zutell, 93).  I will introduce it to the class by planning lessons for our 6 differentiated reading groups.  Here's how it will look.

First, I have chosen 10 words from each story that all have at least one thing in common.  I'll tell you why towards the end.  The reading group leader will show the students the ten vocabulary words on a poster (in the order in which they appear in the story), in addition to the title of the story and the picture on the front of the book.  If there are any words students don't know the meaning of (or I think they will have problems with) this will be the time to discuss the meanings, as well. 

Then 2 groups of students will be given cards with the ten words on them.  They will sort them into any category they want as long as they have a good reason for sorting them that way.  The two groups will come back together and explain why they sorted the words in the way they did.  (Hopefully, they have started to put them together to form the beginning of the story.) 

We will then discuss how we can use these words to help them make their predictions for what the story is about.  If necessary, you can also tell them that this time the words on the poster are posted in the order in which they will see them in the book.   Students will discuss or record their predictions in the reading response section of the reading notebook for what the story will be about based on these clues.  We will remind them that we have tried to help them sequence the order of events by putting the words in the order in which they appear in the story (review what sequence events is--the order in which things happen).  Stop halfway through the story, and tell them they may update or amend their predictions if they need to.

After the story, have students compare and contrast their own predictions to the actual story.  Have them record if they were right or wrong about certain things and what they were.

If time, look at the ten words together.  Ask if anyone can identify what all ten words have in common (they are all verbs, and they all end in "ed").  Review what a verb is and ask if they know what the addition of the "ed" does to the verb (it means the action already happened in the past).  Tell them authors often write stories using past tense verbs. 

Then take a look at one particular word (even if one of the stories doesn't have this verb, have them discuss it anyway), and tell them the rule for adding "ed" to that word (for example, cried--when there is a "y" at the end of a verb, and you want to turn it into past tense, you replace the "y" with "ied").  Ask them for other examples of verbs that end in "y" (fry, try, pry, study, reply or whinny), and have them spell the words in past tense, using this new rule.