"Story Preview" - A Pre-Reading Activity

Here’s a great pre-reading activity to help readers engage in a story:

Step 1: Choose a story to read aloud that you want to focus on but don't show it to the students ahead of time.

Step 2: Choose key words and short phrases (2-3 words) from the story, write them in a list form in the order they appear in the story with the title at the top of the page. You may want to include character names and few things they say in the list. Depending on the age of the students, vary the amount of words/phrases chosen.

Step 3: Have students work in pairs or small groups to create a story from the list you’ve created using the words/phrases in order. This should not take more than about 15 minutes so make sure you choose the right amount of words/phrases for them to work from.

Step 4: Have pairs/groups share their stories.

Step 5: Read the book aloud and then compare students’ stories with the book. 

This is so much fun! We did it in class and I had a blast! I was really surprised at how engaged I was in the story as I listened for the words we used in our story and how they were used by the author. Have fun...let me know how it goes if you give it a try.

Activity taught by Dr. Timothy Rush, University of Wyoming, June, 2010.