In my Critical Reading and Writing Level 2 class today, my students and I worked together to make predictions about a story knowing only the title in advance. Making predictions is one of the most crucial skills in reading comprehension as it helps readers to deepen their understanding of a story. By having our own mental picture of what is going to happen in the story, not only are we able to engage more with the events and the possible consequences, but we are also able to expand our imagination.

At the beginning of the lesson, my students were told that they were going to read a story entitled “Sweet”, but they would not read the story immediately. First they had to design their own book cover. As anticipated, my students enthusiastically blended together their personal “sweet” experiences with their understanding of “sweetness” to create their book covers: there were scenes of friends and family members helping each other, Mr. Charming and the Princess sweetly meeting and of course, the “sweet” they have always enjoyed eating. We then further stretched our imagination by constructing the possible plots of the story and followed this with work on the sequencing this imaginary plot.

The real “Sweet” story turned out to be a love story: and even though it deviated from our constructed plots, we all enjoyed the process of story-making!