Teaching Students to Make Predictions

Teaching Resources › Reading Teaching Guides › Teaching Making Predictions

Ask a class to predict what happens next and you’ll get two kinds of answers: grounded predictions built from clues in the text, and wild guesses pulled from nowhere. The difference between them is the whole skill. A good prediction combines what the text says with what the reader already knows — and that same move is the foundation of inference and active reading. This guide covers how to teach predicting in grades 2–4, and pairs with the printable making predictions worksheets for practice.

A prediction is a reasonable guess about what will happen, based on evidence. It keeps readers thinking ahead, gives them a reason to keep reading (was I right?), and turns reading from passive decoding into an active conversation with the text.

A Prediction Is Not a Wild Guess

The most important thing to teach first is the difference between a prediction and a guess. A guess comes from nowhere; a prediction comes from evidence. Give students a simple formula:

• Clues from the text + what I already know = my prediction.

When a student predicts, ask the follow-up every time: “What made you think that?” If they can point to a clue in the text or a piece of background knowledge, it’s a prediction. If they can’t, it’s a guess — and the fix is to go find the evidence.

Predict Before, During, and After

Predicting isn’t a one-time event at the start of a book — it’s a cycle that runs through the whole reading:

• Before: use the title, cover, and pictures to predict what the text will be about.
• During: pause at key moments and predict what a character will do next, using what just happened.
• After: look back and check — did it turn out the way you thought?

Confirm or Revise — Being Wrong Is Fine

The step students skip is checking the prediction against what actually happens and adjusting it. Teach that a “wrong” prediction isn’t a failure — revising it as new information arrives is exactly what good readers do. Frame it as confirm or revise, not right or wrong. This takes the pressure off and keeps students predicting freely.

The printable making predictions lesson walks the evidence-based routine with short passages, prediction stops, and a complete answer key.

A Teaching Sequence That Works

1. Model a think-aloud: “I see the sky is dark and the character grabbed an umbrella, and I know dark skies mean rain, so I predict it’s about to storm.” Name the clue and the background knowledge out loud.
2. Predict from covers and titles before reading — low-stakes and fun.
3. Predict during reading with sticky notes at planned stopping points.
4. Confirm or revise after each stop, pointing back to the text.
5. Stretch beyond plot: predict a word’s meaning, a character’s choice, or how a problem will be solved.

Where Students Get Stuck (and How to Help)

1. Guessing with no evidence

“A dragon shows up!” in a realistic story. Fix: the “what made you think that?” question, every time — a prediction has to be tied to a clue.

2. Refusing to revise

Students defend a prediction the text has already disproved. Fix: the confirm-or-revise frame — updating a prediction is the skill, not a mistake.

3. Predicting only the plot

Fix: model predictions about word meanings, character decisions, and outcomes so students see predicting as a whole-text habit.

4. Treating a wrong prediction as failure

Fix: celebrate revised predictions out loud — “great, the text surprised us, so let’s update our thinking.”

Where This Connects

• Inference. A prediction is really an inference about what’s coming next — the same clues-plus-knowledge move; see teaching inferences.
• Comprehension strategies. Predicting is one of the core active-reading strategies in the reading comprehension strategies guide.
• Engagement. Readers who predict have a reason to keep going — they want to find out if they were right, which is one of the simplest ways to build reading stamina.