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What is an Anticipation Guide?
This is an individual strategy in which students are presented with a list of statements that are related to the topic(s) presented in a text/video that will be read or viewed. While some of the statements may be clearly true or false, a good anticipation guide includes statements that provoke disagreement and challenge students’ beliefs about the topic.
Why use it?
- To access and activate prior knowledge of the topic of a piece of written text or video
- To introduce a new topic from reading an article on the topic or viewing a video
- To build a student’s personal interest in the subject he/she will be reading about or seeing
- To establish a purpose for reading text/viewing a video (students read to gather information that will either confirm or dispute their initial beliefs and cause them to rethink their beliefs)
- To develop critical-thinking skills
How do I use it?
- Create questions for the Anticipation Guide based on a given article or video, or use one of the Ready-to-Use Anticipation Guides created for CurioCity content (see below).
- Provide students with an Anticipation Guide at the beginning of the class.
- Students complete the first part of the Anticipation Guide activity before they read the selected article or view the selected video.
- Students answer answer the questions by marking a true or false (T/F) in the Before column of the Anticipation Guide.
- Once students have answered the questions, they they read the article or view the video.
- After reading or viewing , students mark true or false (T/F) in the After column of the Anticipation Guide.
- Students find and write evidence from the article or video that supports their thinking, using the space below each statement.
- Once completed these Anticipation Guides can be used in a variety of ways:
- Handed in to the teacher to provide a formative assessment prior to starting studies about the topic featured in the article or video.
- Students pair up and share their responses with their partner and discuss their responses.
- Have a class discussion on the responses and the information presented in the article or video.
Tips for success
- This strategy can work well with expository texts and/or videos that present ideas that may be controversial to the reader.
- Write a series of statements that focus on the information in the text/video footage that you want your students to focus on. Effective statements:
- Allow students to answer initially without having read the text or viewed the video.
- Can be clearly supported or refuted by information in the text or video.
- Challenge student’s beliefs and current level of understanding.
- Are general rather that specific.
Variations
- Model how to fill out an Anticipation Guide and find evidence in a text or video by completing an Anticipation Guide on an overhead or white board with the class.
- Have students develop their own Anticipation Guide questions based on a reading or video. These student-developed Anticipation Guides can be shared with other students.
Extensions
- Have students do additional external research to support or refute the claims and information in the article or video.
Sources
Allen, Janet. (2004). Tools for Teaching Content Literacy. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.
Toronto District School Board. (2004). Instructional Strategies for Making Connections in Science (Grades 9-12). Toronto, ON: Toronto District School Board.
University of Idaho, Education. (2011). Literacy Instruction in Mathematics and Science for Secondary Teachers. Lessons by Strategy – Anticipation Guide. (accessed May 6, 2014).
Create-Your-Own Anticipation Guide
- Anticipation Guide Template [.doc] [.pdf]
Starting Points Using Anticipation Guides
Ready-to-Use Anticipation Guides:
- Anticipation Guide: Aerogels in Aerospace (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: Are e-cigs safer? (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: Challenges of Getting to Mars: Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: Fashion Goes Eco (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: It's a Bird! It's a Plane! No,...It's Superbug! (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: It's a matter of FAT [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: Landfills : Where Your Big Mac Wrappers Go (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: Laser Beams (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: Lift Off! (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: Pitch Perfect (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: Stem Cells - What's Myth, What's Truth? (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: Supermassive Black Holes (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: Teen Depression (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: The Many Uses of Silk: From Optics to Food Safety (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: Why I Love Space (Question page and suggested answers) [.doc] [.pdf]
- Anticipation Guide: The Water Cycle and Water on the Earth's Surface [.doc] [.pdf]