Overview
To activate students' prior knowledge, build curiosity, and set a purpose for a lesson or reading, construct an Anticipation Guide. Anticipation Guides are tools to help students anticipate what they are about to learn by activating prior knowledge and surfacing ways in which those beliefs may (or may not) change as a result of learning.
Through this activity you will be able to:
- Support students to make connections between prior knowledge or previous lessons and what they are learning in the current unit.
- Help students become aware of their developing understanding of a topic.
- Create opportunities to check in on students' understanding throughout and at the end of a lesson or unit.
- Support students to share thoughts and opinions, and revise them as they learn more about the topic.
- Create a regular routine that helps students to organize their approach to learning.
Conducting the Practice
Prepare the Anticipation Guide for students:
- Identify the major ideas presented in a lesson. Write these on a piece of paper or in a blank document.
- Take five minutes during class time to ask students to share their prior knowledge on the topic, either by raising their hands or by writing their thoughts on a piece of paper for you to collect and review later.
- Using your lists of the lesson's major ideas and students' prior knowledge, write 3 to 8 statements that may challenge your students' prior knowledge.
- Add these 3 to 8 statements to your Anticipation Guide document.
Make copies of the Anticipation Guide you created, and have students complete it independently or in small groups before the lesson by choosing to agree or disagree with each statement and explaining why.
Facilitate a class discussion using the statements from the guide to activate both prior knowledge and critical thinking about the topic. For example, you may ask students which statements they disagreed with, and why. Then, write their reasons on the whiteboard/chalkboard or in a document to revisit later.
Have students complete the lesson or assigned reading, noting how evidence from the lesson or text supports or refutes their initial reactions to the statements on the anticipation guide.
Have a class discussion where students share how the lesson encouraged them to have a new understanding or position or solidified their original determination. Ask them to provide references and evidence from the reading to support their position.
Learn More
- Read: Edutopia on APK by Edutopia
- Read: Strategies for Assessing Prior Knowledge by Barbara Blackburn
- Read: Anticipation Guides by Adolescent Literacy
This practice was adapted from the Learning Goals Guide developed by the Learning and Development Group at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research in partnership with PERTS.