Planning Cards Instructions: Prediction


Palette Picker

Read the opening of an unseen picture book (with text) and ask children to sketch the colour palette the text suggests using pencil crayons or other suitable media. Discuss why they have chosen their colours.


Book Trailer

Some trailers just have a musical soundtrack. In this case, listen to the soundtrack and ask the children to predict what the story might be. Otherwise watch the trailer and make predictions. Perhaps structure these discussions by using headings from the ‘Tell Me’ grid – People – Places – Story – Time. Evidence from other prediction activities can also be entered on the grid. The World Book Day website has book trailers.


Big Envelope

Place the book inside a big envelope that has holes cut out. Look at the pictures, text and  colours and make predictions.


Props Bag

The props bag contains artefacts from the story. Reveal them one by one and ask children to make and amend predictions. Keep the most obvious artefacts until the end.


Word Cloud

Type the blurb from the book into a word cloud such as Wordle or Worditout to generate the word cloud. Use the word cloud to look at the text and generate predictions.


IWB Reveal

The electronic equivalent of the Big Envelope. Gradually reveal the cover of the book.

A     _ _ _ _ _ _     G _ _ _ _ N

Tell the class the number of occurrences of each letter in the book title to enable them to guess the name of the book. For example 3 x A, 2 x B … Use a grid so that it is clear how many letters make up each word.

Some Examples

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