Chapter 6: Frontloading Meaning: Pre-Reading Strategies

As teachers, we have to introduce new texts to our students all the time and not every student is going to be excited for every new piece. If fact, we would be lucky to have even a couple of students eager to start something brand new. However, if we can pique their interest before actually starting the text, perhaps we can get more students eager to read for fun and not just because it's assigned.

One thing we can do is build anticipation. Independent readers already do this, but we need to encourage dependent readers to do this as well. Looking at an interesting title or summary always makes me more eager to read than a book that looks boring. I've never done an anticipation guide like the book talks about, but I did have a high school teacher who would do something similar in our class. While it wasn't about the literature, he would ask us difficult questions similar to the ones in the book where there wasn't one answer. We had to examine our beliefs in order to answer the question. While I liked what he did, I think I would also use the anticipation guides because it seems like an interesting idea. We can also do KWL charts, which I don't personally like but do work.