Lit Strategy to Try: Book Cover Predictions

They say a picture is worth 1000 words-- so a book cover might certainly be able to tell us 1000 words about the text we are about to embark on! This is a new literacy strategy that I am hoping to try out with students in the near future-- Book cover predictions!

 

 *** As an example, check out just a few of the covers produced for Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (my favourite book of all time). Just think of how the predictions and inferences would change depending on what cover they saw! ***

This opportunity provides struggling students with the chance to focus on a text and make predictions based on the visual clues offered by an illustration or photograph. If students understand that they are to check and analyze their predictions as they read, the strategy motivates students to read carefully.

The premise is simple: get students to look at the illustration or photo on the cover of a text.

• Explain to students that finding clues from illustrations and photographs helps them make predictions about a story or other text
• Ask students to think about what they already know regarding setting, characters, and other story elements as they look over the book cover
• Ask students, “What do you think this story will be about? Why?” and get them to either discuss or fill out a prediction chart
• Additional sample questions to discuss or write about include:

• What do you think is happening? Why?
• Where do you think this story takes place?
• What do you think is being said or done in the picture?
• If it is a photo, where/when do you think the picture was taken? Why was it taken?
• What do you think the artist or photographer tried to capture in this picture? What is the artist/photographer trying to show us? What message is he/she trying to send?
• If you were the subject of this picture, what would you be thinking or feeling? What makes you think that?
• What information is missing in the picture? (What are you wondering about that would help you to better understand the message?)
• What do you find interesting about the picture? What about the picture makes you want to read this story?

• Hopefully as students read, they adjust and refine their predictions based on learning.
   

  

  The cover I see most often in schools. There are so many references to the story in this depiction-- the items in the tree, the shadowy figures of Jem and Scout, the mockingbird on the top branch.