PreP

PreP (Pre-reading Plan)
Section 6.1, (Instructional Strategy 1)

Rationale: The PreP strategy prepares students for a topic of study by activating prior student knowledge and offering that knowledge to teachers for analysis. Students will brainstorm in groups to determine what they already know about particular ideas to better enable them to build on these ideas in future study. This approach also allows the teacher to better prepare future instruction on the topic by allowing them to directly teach to what do or do not know.

Instructions: 1. Find a central concept in a passage from an assigned texts. 2. Introduce students to the structure of the PreP strategy. Model an example to teach students how the strategy works. 3. Explain to students that before they read a new chapter from their texts, they will be activating prior learning to aid their comprehension. Share a key concept from the reading and ask students to consider all of their ideas relating to this concept. 4. Place students in groups and ask them to brainstorm together. 5. Call on groups to share with the entire class. Show students how to visually map these concepts on a display that the entire class can see. 6. Tell student to share new idea that occur to them as they see the map growing. Talk about the mental associations as they happen. 7. Ask students to reformulate their ideas in light of the discussion.

Application to Language Arts: The PreP strategy could be applied to a particular poem. Ask students to consider the central them of a poem that will be read in class. Perform the PreP strategy with students, according to the instructions mentioned before. After the discussion has been completed, have students write a paragraph summarizing how their thoughts about the central concept may have grown or changed in light of the discussion.