Predicting with The Mitten

I've been MIA lately... so much going on at work and getting ready for the holidays is taking up most of my time! But I do want to take a few minutes to archive some wonderful things that are going on in my classroom and in my life! 

One of the recent reading strategies that I taught my 3rd graders was predicting. A great book to teach this skill is The Mitten by Jan Brett. For those of you who don't know....it's a humorous story that retells the traditional Ukrainian wintertime tale of several animals squeezing into a mitten to stay warm. The language is humorous and predictable. The illustrations also help them make predictions because they foreshadow what will happen next by including a small picture on the side of the page. The students had a great time predicting as I read.

While there are several ways to use the book to teach predictions, I chose to make predictions Before, During, and After reading. I had them record their predictions in their reading notebook. Then they discussed their predictions with other students and they made comparisons with one another. I printed out the whole page size mitten from http://www.janbrett.com/put_the_animals_in_the_mitten.htm. The mitten is blank but I drew some lines on it for them to write what their predictions were before, during, and after reading. They also had to explain if their prediction(s) was (were) correct.

I'll post some pictures of their work this week! (hopefully!)