Get them talking! Interactive Anticipation Guide
Support for Multilingual Students' Background Knowledge
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending WestEd's QTEL summer institute in San Francisco.
I attended the workshop on literacy development for secondary learners. The presenters suggested giving students the task of agreeing or disagreeing with statements on an anticipatory guide AND having pairs discuss these ideas by using formulaic expressions.
An anticipation guide lists a variety of statements about an upcoming lesson or topic. Mostly, teachers assign it before reading a text to activate students' prior knowledge and build curiosity about a new topic. Before reading, students read some statements about key concepts presented in the upcoming material; they're often structured as a series of statements with which the students can choose to agree or disagree.
Writing the statements is an art.
They should be provocative and theme-like—not too specific but enough to connect clearly to the unit subject matter.
Here’s an example of the edited statements we worked on for a possible guide:
Anticipation guides stimulate students' interest in a topic and help teachers observe what their students generally know about the upcoming topic.
Not only are all students activated about the upcoming material, but Multilingual Learners also have the opportunity and support to interact with a peer. Interaction is one of the most effective ways to acquire language and make connections.
Instructions
Pass out the guide to each student.
Each student marks if they agree or disagree silently with each statement and adds the reason (they can use any language in their repertoire).
Pair up students strategically, keeping in mind their background knowledge, access to English, ability to focus, etc.
Model the interactions using the formulaic guide at the bottom of the anticipation guide.
The students go back and forth with each statement on the list (usually about 4-5). They can write down their own or partner's reasons for their answers.
The first student says:
I agree/disagree _______. Number (look at anticipation statement #1) ___ says: "______________." I agree/disagree with it because _____________. So, I'm going to mark it agree/disagree.
The partner then says:
I agree/disagree with you because _________. So, for statement _______. I will mark agree/disagree. Now, let me read statement ___________.
Here's an example of an anticipation guide I created for a government unit on the Constitution.
Have you used an extended anticipation guide like this before?
What worked?
What would you change?
Please push the heart if you like this post!
