Reading Strategy: Plan Your Reading

Before you read the personal narrative, look it over, or preview it. Try to decide what it is about and what might happen. This makes reading the text more meaningful.

Reading Strategy Plan Your Reading
    How to Preview and Predict

  • 1. Read the title and look at the pictures.

  • 2. Then begin to read the selection. Stop every few paragraphs to predict, or decide what will happen next. Record your ideas in a Prediction Chart.

  • 3. Read on to find out if your predictions are confirmed, or if they actually happened. Make notes in your chart.

Strategy in Action

Here’s how one student previewed and predicted.

Look Into the Text

title Growing Together

Some days I still get homesick for Cuba, with its warm sea breezes and its mango trees. I live in Georgia now, far from the sea. There is winter here, when the days are short and cold. There is only one tree in my yard—a magnolia tree. It has no fruit, but it does bear flowers.

It is no ordinary tree. It has a story.

Prediction Chart
What the Text SaysMy PredictionWhat Happens
The title has the word growing in it.Maybe this story is about plants.
The author tells about a tree.I predict that the text will tell about the tree.

Practice Together

Follow the steps in the How-To box. Preview the selection. Then begin a Prediction Chart. As you read, check your predictions.