Probable Passage - Vocabulary, Comprehension, and Engagement

I am always interested in teaching strategies that function on multiple levels, particularly involving the too often forgotten element of engagement.  Learning is meant to be interesting.  So is reading.  Finding ways to engage and excite our struggling readers is just as important as assisting them with their actual reading.  Probable Passage is one of those gold-mine strategies that incorporate vocabulary, comprehension, and engagement in one pre-reading activity.  It also provides a great opportunity for post-reading discussion.

            Probable Passage is pre-reading strategy where the teacher creates a list of key words from the chosen text, presents them to the students, ensures that students understand what the words mean, and asks them to arrange the words according to their probable role in the text (characters, setting, problem, outcomes, etc).  Beers (2003) created a Probable Passage worksheet, displayed in Figure 6.3 (p. 88) of When Kids Can’t Read.  Once the students have placed the words in their probable categories, they are asked to use the words to compose a prediction statement describing what the text they are about to read might be about. 

As I mentioned earlier, the Probable Passage strategy creates the opportunity for several things to happen.  First, the students are introduced to key terms they are likely to encounter and need to know when reading the text.  For struggling or reluctant readers, this head start can be extremely beneficial.  Secondly, the students are compelled to consider characters, setting, conflict, resolutions, and potential causal relationships all before ever opening the text.  In this way, students are reminded what they should be paying attention to while reading, while forcing them to make their own connections and predictions about what might happen in the text.  This is where engagement comes into play.  There is something about guessing games that appeals to even the most apathetic of students.  Activities like these help to pique the students’ interest and motivate them to do the reading in order to discover what actually happened and if their predictions were accurate.  In this way, students are given an opportunity to be invested in their reading, while simultaneously feeling prepared for it.  I really like the idea of comparing their Probable Passages to the story after reading in the form of a class discussion.  Beers (2003) suggests asking questions such as: “How did your predictions differ from what happened in the story? Now that you’ve read the story, in what categories would the author place the key words?” (p. 93)  I can really see how this would help to extend and solidify meaning for our readers, and I think given the nature of the activity, the students will want to make the comparisons, which is certainly the best part.  

Reference List:

Beers, K. (2003). When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.